Healers and Killers
by thomasrigby
Summary: Direct sequel to "The Grudge 2" - A group of seemingly unrelated people tied to a vicious Chicago serial murder case find themselves also unwittingly tied to the curse of Kayako.
1. Prologue: Conscience

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge" or any characters contained within the films. Constructive criticism and feedback is much appreciated.

**INTRODUCTION: **Firstly, much thanks for everyone's kind words on my previous "Ju-On"/"Grudge" story, "Everyone Must Suffer." I was genuinely shocked to find so LITTLE "Grudge"-related fanfic out there, because put simply this is a movie series that deserves every bit of the cult fandom that it has. Kayako Saeki, as portrayed by the vastly talented Takako Fuji, might very well be my favorite film villain of all time, and this is a series that can reinvent itself with every entry and still easily call itself "The Grudge."

So, without further adieu, here's my new story, "Healers and Killers." If you read "Everyone Must Suffer," it took place in the Japanese films' universe, which is quite a bit different from what many of you are probably used to. This one, however, is a direct sequel to the American film "The Grudge 2," and pretends that "The Grudge 3" doesn't exist.

On with the show, and if you're a fan of the 7-film series you know how these start out.

_"JU-ON: The curse of one who dies while in the grip of a powerful rage. It gathers and takes effect in the places where that person lived. Those who encounter it are consumed by its fury. The fury eventually overcomes the Ju-On's conscience, and the power of the vengeful spirit increases exponentially..."_

**PROLOGUE**

**Conscience**

_I sometimes wonder if anyone is even aware of what's truly happening to them, even as I am taking their life. _

_The way it unfolds is almost always the same. They come to me, often aware of the term "urban legend," but too jaded by the modern world to believe that any phrase with a connection to AIDS-filled needles in pay telephone handles or reptiles in sewers could be anything even close to the truth. Some of them are searching for nothing more than a thrill, a story to tell their friends in hushed tones or giggles. By doing so, they are laughing at me. And by committing the act of entering into my abode, they are so often completely unaware that they are about to become part of one of those very stories that they laugh at, the ones they find on the internet or hear of in late-night conversation._

_Because I am a very true urban legend. And when they come into my house, I see them. I remember them. I follow them. And then I come for them, and they are mine._

_They are often aware of some of the specifics of my previous life. They might know that I was once married and had a son, that I was killed by my husband. What they fail to realize is the humanity contained within these sad acts. My death was the result of an act of defiance, an act of love, a desire to escape the brutal confines of my terrifying existence. _

_What Takeo did to me was unforgivable, and as I see the three laughing, smiling young American boys crossing the threshold into my new home, I find myself thinking of him. Whenever someone dares to seek me out, I think of Takeo. Angry, controlling, and rage-filled Takeo. I think of him now just as I thought of him then, feeling his hands around my face as I crawled away from him in terror, fleeing for my life. The roughness of his palms as they caressed my cheeks in those brief moments before they moved in opposite directions, snapping my neck instantly and leaving me unable to breathe._

_At that moment, I hated. I hated him more than I had ever hated anything in my short, pitiful existence. I despised what he had done not only to me, but to Toshio. Poor, innocent Toshio, now nothing more than an empty husk in the bathtub, drowned by the man who had once sworn to love and protect me. The rage comforted me, knowing that I was close to death, and knowing that one day Takeo would be punished appropriately for his actions. In the next life, if not in this one._

_But as I felt my eyes close, and consciousness slip away from me, something very strange happened. The pain went away. My corporeal body slowly left my physical one. I clearly saw my prone, lifeless form from the stairs of my house. Not able to intervene, I saw Takeo as he walked away.  
_

_I had been unable to grasp what had happened to me since then, but now I am more than aware of the power I possess. In the moments leading up to my death, I had wished with all of my heart for vengeance against the injustice done to me. The vengeance against Takeo had been sweet, so sweet, but soon, others came into my home. As I looked at the happy couple and their mother, I found myself wishing nothing but bad thoughts for them…the thoughts built, and built, until I found myself unable to control myself._

_Takeo had been the first, and I thought it would end there. But it wasn't enough. It was a period of weeks leading up to the next time I killed a human being. Familiarizing myself not only with the thoughts, hopes and sins of those now walking freely in my presence, but also with my own abilities. No longer bound by gravity, time or space, I perfected the ability of movement. The act of moving in the afterlife requires great patience and understanding, as well as discipline; if you think you are somewhere, you are there. I also met others in my realm, but they recoiled in fear at me. I soon realized why. I possessed a power they didn't. While they could also move with a thought, I could kill with a thought._

_In a most unexpected twist, I was even reunited with Toshio. His rage had rivaled my own, and like me, he remained here in death. And I taught him. I taught him about humanity's weaknesses, its stupidity and its ignorance in the face of evil. Most importantly, he was willing to learn how to take lives, and I was more than willing to teach him._

_The vengeance we deserved life had been taken away from me, and as I watched and watched the American family below me, I could do nothing but imagine them in the place of Takeo. One day, I found myself alone with the husband. Then the wife. And then the mother…_

_They continued to come. The social worker and her sister. The thrill-seekers since then. And the high-school students playing a prank, which led to Toshio and myself taking our first trip to America, where I now reside._

_There was one similarity between Tokyo and Chicago – it didn't take long for panic to spread once I made my presence known. After that first family was found in the state that I left them, nobody wanted to live there. Sure, there were the usual stable of people wanting some semblance of life-affirming idiocy by breaking in, but living there was out of the question. It was the same here. Many people lived in this place, and it is much larger than my home in Tokyo. Many families and friends passed through this building on a daily basis. Needless to say, they were all gone with surgical precision after I killed the girl who brought me here. And her family. And her friends…_

_We were all alone again, but not for long._

_It is no different here. People continue to mock me, to mock the memory of my life by not respecting the sanctity of my home. They must learn a lesson. They ALL must learn a lesson, and fortunately, or unfortunately for them, they must die to learn this lesson._

_Just like the people I hear on the first floor. Soon, they will know my pain…_


	2. The Fury

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge" or any characters from the films. Constructive criticism and feedback is welcome and appreciated.

**The Fury**

"No problem, man, I'll see you tomorrow," Landon said, waving at his boss nonchalantly as he walked out the back door.

Today was Friday, and as such, it had been quite the hectic day at downtown Burger King store #4. $1500 hours from five until seven, nonstop stragglers ever since. But while the rest of the employees had spent the majority of the night groaning and grumbling, Landon Gerrels didn't mind. In fact, he welcomed the business, because this kind of business meant more time spent working after closing, which in turn meant more money. Money that he needed for a lot of things – car payments, insurance, and eventual college money.

_Strange,_ he thought, as he closed the door behind him. _It looks different out here._

At closing time, all the employees typically left the restaurant together at the back exit behind the racks of fresh buns. Since Steve, his boss, had said there was a lot of extra paperwork to do tonight and all of the cleaning was done, he had told Landon that it was okay to leave. Now, however, Landon was wishing he had waited.

He took the black "BK" cap off his head and looked around. The store was located in one of the busiest parts of the city, and usually, no matter what time Landon got off work there would be cars zipping by on the adjoining Chicago street, and lights illuminating the scene from the surrounding high-rise buildings, the majestic city skyline visible in the background.

Tonight, there was nothing. No cars on the streets, no lights in the windows of the surrounding apartment and office buildings. Nothing but the sound of the wind whipping in between the vast expanse of steel structures containing their restaurant.

Landon began moving, walking north through the alleyway between two of the buildings toward the El-Train station. He didn't look at his surroundings.

_That place…_

Despite his better instincts, Landon found his mind wandering to that stupid idea Jason had earlier in the day. His friends didn't have jobs, and he had a couple hours to kill after work, so he had asked Jason if he had any ideas about what to do. Now, he was beginning to regret asking the question…

Suddenly, a very distinct sound broke the stillness of the night – a high-pitched scream, sounding suspiciously like the meowing of a cat. The noise sounded like it came about twenty feet behind him. Instinctively, he jerked his head backwards.

Nobody there. _Just me, and a hundred feet of nothing on either side out of this alleyway…_

As he turned his head forward again, another sound pierced through the blank.

_CCCCCC RRRRRRR OOOOOO AAAAAA KKKKKK…_

Landon didn't know what to make of the sound. It was like nothing he had ever heard before, almost akin to the very low noise that a bullfrog makes. Unlike the cat, however, this noise sounded like it was coming from in front of him.

He sped up, now panicking. Landon heard the noise again – _CCCCC RRRRR OOOOO AAAAA KKKKKK _– now louder, and sounding like it emanated from directly _above_ him. His faster gait turned into a full-on run, and he prayed he would reach the relative safety of the open Chicago city at the end of the alleyway…

But as he reached his destination, it appeared. _She _appeared, crouched on the ground, face tilting upward, eyes burning with hatred. As he heard the strange croaking again, Landon made the connection in his mind that this unholy woman was no doubt making the noise. It would be the final realization of his life.

* * *

Thomas had felt his eyes getting heavy over an hour ago, but for some reason sleep continued to elude him.

He looked at red numbers on his alarm clock. 1:17 A.M. No doubt Landon had already gotten off work, taking that near suicidal route of his through the alleys and seedier parts of the city on his way to the El-Train. Maybe it had been that thought keeping him up. The stories about that horrific serial killer were all over the news. The fact that all of the bodies had been found in their own homes did little to comfort anybody. It only increased the furor that the city was feeling at the moment.

_Jesus Christ,_ Thomas thought, _that guy could just pick Landon off easy as hell…_

The case had been creeping up in his mind at ever-increasing intervals lately. Thomas, like every other student at his high school, regularly talked about the Second City Slasher – the name that the press had, in all their creativity, come up with for the boogeyman who broke the sanctity of your home and killed you while you slept. The only thing that comforted Thomas and his small group of friends was the choice of victim. They had all been females. Since he had been reading books about serial killers since all this had begun, it told him one thing – that the killer was a male, and he was very possibly very safe.

Thomas sat up in bed, running a hand through his messy hair, looking out the window at the clear night sky. He reached for his end table, feeling around in the darkness and grabbing his TV remote control.

_Maybe I just need some background noise,_ he thought, pressing the power button and letting the comforting confines of a stale TV news report envelop the room.

Except they were talking about _him._ The Slasher. The guy who didn't just kill you, he mutilated you.

They had found another body yesterday. It had been the talk of William Raimi high school that day, and it appeared that just now the police had allowed the media to report the facts.

Another female. Another young, attractive female, just as they had all been. 23 years old, college student at the University of Chicago, Stephanie Swinton. The anchor delivered these facts in a cold, dull deadpan, doing her best to convey the message that all was still calm, that the police would still win the day in the end.

Thomas quickly changed the channel, searching for some lighter news, finally settling on a rerun of SportsCenter.

He laid down again, letting out a giant sigh…

_Another one…Jesus Christ, what was I thinking?_

He thought of their excursion earlier in the day. The apartment building. The one that everybody in school said was haunted. Jason had wanted to go there, and Landon had been more than willing to go along. Not wanting to get ostracized by his peers, Thomas had gone in, as well.

There had been nothing on the inside of the place that had actively scared him. It had been abandoned ever since the murders had happened there a few months ago. It was by no means derelict yet, although it would be in a few more months' time. They hadn't even delved into the structure that far – just the first floor, walking up and down the hallways a few times, waiting for something to pop out of one of the apartment rooms.

It never happened. But Thomas had felt uneasy the entire time. It had been a feeling unlike anything he'd ever known – the feeling that someone was looking over his shoulder, not five inches away, burning into his face with a deathly, steely gaze of hatred. It had overwhelmed him eventually, and it had been his doing that they decided to leave that apartment building in the heart of the city.

_I'm here now,_ Thomas thought. _I'm home. I'm safe._

He leaned over to his right side, letting his arm dangle over the side of the bed.

His heart leapt up to his throat as he felt it – a hand reaching out from underneath the bed, clamping down over his wrist in a vicelike grip…

Then he heard it.

_CCCCCCCC RRRRRR OOOOO AAAAAA KKKKKK…_

The immensely powerful arm pulled him down, first on the floor, then underneath the bed, the sound of his own screams not quite drowning out the sound coming from the thing underneath the bed…

* * *

_Oh, man, this is actually happening…_

"I think we can go in there," Tiffany said, fumbling with his shirt as she drunkenly slurred out the words.

She was, of course, referring to the master bedroom of the house. More than happy to oblige, Jason opened the door, letting Tiffany in.

He looked around – _oh yeah, this will suit my purposes just fine…_

Tiffany jumped onto his body, straddling him with both legs, and planting kisses along his face. He returned the favor.

Without a doubt, Tiffany Young was gorgeous. Jason Unger had lusted after her for years – basically since the day he had first seen her in eighth grade. She had been a new kid then. Of course, as a young, attractive girl, she was now one of the most popular girls at William Raimi high, quickly rising to untouchable status for Jason.

Tonight, however, all the parts had fallen into place. He had managed to gain entry to this popular-kids' party. He had managed to weasel his way to Tiffany's side of the room, and he had managed to get Tiffany just drunk enough to make it seem like Jason wasn't _quite_ the loser that he thought himself to be.

_And now, four years' worth of effort is about to pay off – I'm going to bang Tiffany Young…_

He slammed her down on the bed, quickly pulling her shirt over her head, running his hands through her shoulder-length blonde hair. She pushed him aside, quickly getting on top of him, removing her bra with one hand and running her free hand through his hair with the other.

_To think that a few hours ago I was fumbling around in a stupid old house…_

It hadn't quite been a house. That much Jason had been well aware of. Unlike his two friends, however, Jason made a conscious effort to be one of the people who was _somebody_ at William Raimi high. He had heard the stories of the dumb "Death House" ever since the news story about those murders broke, and ever since that time he had tried to convince his two buddies to join him there. Because lord knows he wasn't going in that place alone.

As soon as they had went in, Thomas had turned into his usual scaredy-cat self, and if it hadn't been for him, they would have stayed and gotten a bunch of photos of that third floor apartment where all the serious shit really went down. The family massacre. Landon, also true to himself, stuck by Thomas and left when he had decided to puss out, leaving Jason with no choice but to high-tail it out of there as well.

_Now all we've got is each other's words,_ he thought. _Hopefully that's enough._

He looked upward at Tiffany's adorable body, then reached up, caressing her breasts – which were just as spectacular as he had always imagined – with both hands.

Suddenly, it seemed darker in the room. He couldn't make out her figure, or her face, or even hear her panting sounds which had been coming out of her ever since he had shoved her onto the bed.

There was nothing but silence.

Two hands grabbed at his wrists, pinning him back on the bed.

"Holy shit, Tiffany," Jason said, laughing to himself. "You like to play rough, or what?"

He was then aware that Tiffany had leaned over, until her face was inches from his own. He could feel the ends of her hair tickling his face.

"Tiffany, come on, what's going on?"

Just as suddenly as the room had seemed like it passed into pitch blackness, he could see clearly.

Tiffany was no longer Tiffany. In her place was a monster of a woman – older, in her '30s, clearly Asian, but her skin a deathly, pale shade of white. Her mouth was turned downward in an expression of hatred, and her eyes were inches from his own.

_What the hell is…_

She opened her mouth.

_CCCCCC RRRRRRR OOOOOO AAAAAA KKKKKK…_

Jason began screaming.


	3. Jessica

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge" or any characters from the films. Feedback and constructive criticism is welcome.

**Jessica**

"You wanna know what really happened to that guy?" said Brian, peering at her from underneath his surgical mask, eyes turned upward to indicate the tiniest sense of malice.

"I already know what happened," Jessica answered, putting the finishing touches on the stitch job separating Jason Unger's chest cavity from the civilized world. "Massive coronary heart failure."

"Aren't you the least bit curious as to how that happens to a perfectly healthy 17-year-old boy?"

Jessica laughed. She had known Brian since medical school, and while she had always made it a point to treat their chosen profession with the utmost respect, Brian had always looked at it as the living embodiment of one of those glamorous doctor shows on television. Never content to be a surgeon. Criminal forensics was where it was at. At least, that seemed to be Brian's mantra.

"I don't think it's our business," Jessica said.

"Maybe it should be. There weren't any signs of blockage."

"No, there weren't. So I'm eagerly awaiting your diagnosis, Brian."

"What are you getting at?"

"Now comes the part where you give me your best Gary Sinise impersonation, right?"

"Who's Gary Sinise?"

"Wow, I'm impressed. He's the lead guy on one of those _C.S.I. _shows. Forget which one."

"Is it Vegas?"

"No, I don't think it's the original one," Jessica said, covering up the body of Jason with a light blue apron. She walked away, holding her scalpel in one hand, toward the sink on the other side of the spacious operating room.

Brian followed her. "Must be New York, then. _NYPD Blue_ dude is the star of the Miami one. Besides, why would you say that to me, anyway?"

"I just think it's funny. This weird game you always play everytime we get something that's slightly out of the ordinary. I think you were in the wrong major. You should have been a criminology student."

"Hey, it's always been a side interest," he said, removing his surgical mask and popping off his gloves. "When there's nobody keeping you busy at home, you blow a lot of nights looking up sick shit on the net."

Jessica laughed again, turning her head and looking at Brian as the two of them began thoroughly washing their hands. There was no doubt that he was a good-looking guy – brown, soulful eyes, well-groomed hair, tall and athletic.

Once upon a time he'd been the recipient of an all-expenses paid baseball scholarship to the University of Florida, but as was the case with most doctors, Brian Mills had a _story. _Namely, his sister that had died in the middle of the night when he was a teenager due to an attack of the asthma that the family doctor had never been able to diagnose. Something inside Brian had immediately snapped that day, and she was sure that in his own mind he was a kind of superhero healing others the way no one had healed his sister.

For a time, she'd even considered dating him, as she was well-aware of the feelings that he had possessed for her ever since their first days together at medical school. While she reciprocated some of the feelings, there was just something off about Brian. He had heard from many of her female friends that they had rejected men for being too safe; she felt the opposite with Brian. The death of his sister had obviously changed him, despite the fact that she had not known him back then. He had a rough edge; a dangerous side. Every Friday night after getting off work he would hit the Billy Goat Tavern at the Pier and drink himself into a stupor. Twice since they ahd been on dead body detail here at Mercy hospital she had been called to the county jails to bail him out. Apparently, Brian also liked to fight.

Lost in her own thoughts, Jessica removed her own surgical mask, and the two of them began walking out the door of the operating room.

"So did the director take your request?" she said, looking deeply into his eyes.

"Haven't gotten the word back yet," he said, guiding her out the door with his hand on the small of her back.

"Well, what do you think will happen?"

"My guess is that I'll be staying right here with you. We make a pretty good team, you know."

"Brian, you're too good for this place," she said as they rounded the corner into an empty hallway in the hospital, the only other person in sight being Julie, the bored nighttime receptionist at the end of this particular surgery wing. "Anybody could carve up dead bodies with me. You need to be in pediatrics."

"Jessica…"

"I mean that, Brian. I've known you long enough to hear when you're really passionate about something."

"What? Like being a cross between _E.R. _George Clooney and Batman? And before you say anything, I am well aware that Clooney once played Batman, but let's just forget that ever happened."

"I'm serious," she said, stopping in her tracks and burning into him with her best business gaze. "We all want to make a difference, but you do more than anyone else I've ever met."

"There's worse things in the world than autopsy with you," he said, managing a small smile.

"Well, that's good to know," she answered. They resumed walking down the hallway toward reception. The waiting room was completely empty. "So what's going on tonight?"

"You should know that by now, Jess, it's Friday."

"Oh, right. I forgot."

"How could you forget it's Friday? Don't you have any plans?"

"As hard as it is to believe, no, I don't. Not a single one."

"So what? Go home, dip yourself in a bowl of Rocky Road and cry yourself to sleep?"

"Ouch."

Brian laughed. "Oh, come on, you know I'm just kidding."

"Shockingly, you weren't far off."

"You could come out with me."

"Drinking with your old college buddies, and then be embarrassed to high hell when you may or may not get into fisticuffs with some guy you've never met? Sorry, I'll pass."

"We don't have to do that. I could ditch those guys."

"And what then?"

"I don't know. Get something to eat somewhere."

"Yeah, well, I appreciate the offer. But I think I have to take a rain check on that. My mom is coming over tonight."

"Oh, what brings Mrs. Harper to the grandest city in the Midwest?"

"You sound like a tour guide. Nothing. Just to see me."

"Sounds invigorating," he said as they reached Julie at the reception desk. "Real screamer tonight, huh, Jule?"

"Dead nights are good nights," Julie responded, her weary, mid-'50s mousy frame sulking behind the desk. As usual, she was wearing a gray vest over a red shirt. Jessica wondered if there were any other two garments in her closet.

There was a mirror behind the reception desk, and Jessica caught a reflection of herself in it. She ran a hand through her hair, letting out a sigh, the finality of the week hitting her like a freight train. She always felt this way on Friday nights. She had never told Brian, but she too longed to get away from autopsy. She had heard as much when she had accepted the position – the pay was good and the hours weren't as long as some of the other departments, but the nonstop wave of cadavers – and the reduction of said cadavers to clinical pieces of meat – took a toll on your soul after a while.

_Like me,_ Jessica thought to herself. _Here I am, thirty-five years old, and I have to lie that I have something going on during an otherwise bustling Friday night in Chicago._

She looked at herself in the mirror. Clearly, she had aged a great deal in the three years that she and Brian had been in the autopsy room. While she had never considered herself beautiful, she had always been well-aware of her bubbling good looks. She had grown up in California, and was a typical California girl – tall, blonde, tanned and willowy. The first lines had appeared on her face mere weeks after starting in autopsy, and at her last estimate, she now looked five years older than she actually was.

The thoughts of California brought her back to her own _story_ – that one mystical point or epiphany that seemed to lead everyone who had been considering a career as a doctor and pushed them headlong into the nonstop parade of books, fact memorization and tests that made up med school. It had been her father, a caring, doting father, her best friend in the world, and a Lieutenant in the Santa Monica police force.

She had never forgotten the night when her mother got the call. Jessica was an only child, and the ride to the hospital in eerie silence was still vivid in her mind all these years later. She had been a teenager at the time, just entering her senior year in high school, and suddenly, boys and proms and cheerleading didn't seem so important.

It especially didn't seem as important once she had learned that her father could have been saved if her father hadn't been placed in I.C.U. upon his arrival, granting the bullet that the thief had popped into his chest precious time to complete its deadly, zigzagging mission toward his heart. She had made up her mind that she would make it her mission in life to make sure that nobody else felt the pain she felt at that time, and continued to feel to this day.

_Still, it's good to get away,_ she thought to herself, and just as she resigned herself to saying her goodbyes to Brian and Julie, going home and settling in with a good book, the double doors leading into the unit burst open.

There were two men pushing the cart, the hallway lights behind them illuminating the grisly scene. Jessica was suddenly grateful that nobody was present in the waiting room to the left of the reception desk. Clearly, they wouldn't like what they saw.

The body on the stretcher was clearly human, although barely recognizable as that. It was a young girl with brown hair. No facial features could be recognized, as the entire area was a red mess, carved up with some horrific implement.

"Sorry to burst in here, guys," one of the men pushing the stretcher said. "But the Commander wants this one done right away. Court order."

Jessica heard Brian let out a sigh of exasperation behind her, but her mind was already focused on the more practical aspects of just why this grotesque abomination had been brought into their autopsy unit. She took note of the men – both in their mid-'40s, both overweight and sweaty – and their EMT credentials stamped all over their clothing.

"What is this?" she finally said, casting another glance at the body on the stretcher. A big, angry gash ran from her forehead all the way down to her chin – through the bridge of the nose, the lips. Dried blood caked to her hair, face, and clothing.

"It's another one," was what the older EMT man said.

Not surprisingly, Brian knew what _another one_ was right away.

"The Slasher?" he said, his face turning deadly serious.

"Yeah, she was found in this abandoned apartment building downtown," the same EMT man said. "Neighbors in the area heard screaming from the building and called the cops. They found her lying face down on the second floor hallway."

"But I thought that all the Slasher's victims were found in their own homes?" Brian said.

"Maybe so," the younger EMT man said, "but the police think this is another one. Same signature, same pattern, same type of victim. They want a full workup, and the insider sources said that there wasn't anything going on here."

Jessica slowly turned around and looked at Brian. While she expected disappointment, surprisingly, he was giving her a look of playfulness.

"Well," he said, "ready to be sexy TV investigators?"

"After you, Dr. Mills," she said, pulling out a fresh set of gloves from one of the drawers at the reception desk.


	4. Brittany

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge," or any characters from the films. Constructive criticism and feedback is welcome and VERY appreciated.

**Brittany**

_Shit, it's cold out here…_

Brittany Shay thought of everything that had already transpired throughout the course of this night. A night of fun, friends, and drinking at Limerick's bar in the heart of downtown Chicago, followed by a trip back to her friend Crystal's apartment for some after-party bonding. Unfortunately, she had missed the last bus shuttling people to and from Millennium Park which took her back to the University of Chicago's dorm complexes, leaving her with no choice but to walk the three miles from the heart of the city to her humble two-person abode.

And it was cold outside. It was April, a mere month away from graduation and freedom from the confines of Academia for the remainder of her life. The weather had switched about a month ago, as a particularly harsh winter had yielded to an unnaturally warm early Spring. Today, however, the trademark Chicago winds were out in full force, and a nasty cold front had enveloped the entire state of Illinois. She was underdressed – a short-sleeve UC t-shirt, blue jeans, and a spring jacket – and thus felt more than a few shivers as she walked down the still fairly-crowded sidewalk in the heart of the city, the Willis Tower Skydeck looming in the background like a dictator viewing the hordes of worshiping denizens.

The wind whipped her long brown hair into her face, and she brushed it away with an errant hand. She looked to her right – next to one of the storefronts was an enclosed newspaper machine for the Chicago Sun-Times.

The headline screamed out at her – "Police Closer in Identifying Second City Slasher."

Suddenly, Brittany wasn't shivering due to the weather.

_The Slasher…_

In between her nonstop parade of pre-med classes, that goddamn Second City Slasher thing was all the people at college talked about. She had never read a single story in the newspaper, and every time the reports popped up on the nightly news she changed the channel, but she could name the specifics of almost every victim just by proxy.

The teenage girl found in her own bedroom, eyes carved out of her head…

The wife of the prominent city attorney, decapitated, her head found in the trash can outside the house, a sombering warning for her husband who always worked too late…

The young college coed – at her very own University of Chicago – taking the El-Train to see a Cubs game, vanished without a trace, and rediscovered a week later in a vacant lot, her hair cut off from her head and her fingers removed – but not with a knife…

The list went on and on inside Brittany's head as she veered left into one of the city's uncrowded alleyways, in between two three-story buildings.

In fact, there wasn't a person in sight in front of her. The chatter continued behind her as people continued to soldier on in the more manageable part of the city.

_Strange,_ Brittany thought, _everyone always used to complain about the crowd density before, but now everyone loves it._

While the stories scared her, she wasn't worried. With the exception of the college-age victim, they had all been found in their own homes, and her own knowledge of serial murder cases – which had been culled from a couple books about Charles Manson she had read during a phase in high school and a few Tru TV documentaries – told her that they very rarely attempted to snare their victims in broad daylight.

Besides, she was armed. Her father, after all, was the Commander of the Chicago police. As soon as this whole mess had started, he had pulled a few of his bureaucratic strings to get Brittany the requisite license to carry a concealed weapon. As of this moment, a .38 snub-nosed revolver was safely tucked away in a holster, hidden by the bottom of her spring jacket.

Brittany looked up – someone was walking toward her. She felt her heartbeat quicken, but her nerves were easily put to rest when she saw that this person was a female. Short blonde hair, slightly druggy face – but by the evidence of the smile coming from that face, a friendly one.

The awkward moment came when they met each other in the tight alley way.

Brittany nodded toward the other girl, judging that she was perhaps in her early '30s. She nodded back. In the relative darkness of the alley, Brittany also surmised that the girl had a pierced lip. She proceeded walking, the other side of the alleyway clearly visible by now.

_W__here are all the people?_

As she reached the end of the alley way, she felt a crushing pain and saw nothing but red. The resonant _thunk_ of something heavy and blunt waylaying was the sound emanating through her mind as she passed out.

* * *

Brittany's eyes opened, and she was immediately aware of the fact that both her feet and hands were restrained, tied together by a thick rope.

The blurriness subsided slowly, and she looked around. She was in the middle of a hallway of what looked like an apartment building – an abandoned one, by the appearance. The multitudes of doors on either side of her were dirty and unkempt, the floor covered in a thick layer of dust. It was almost completely dark, and Brittany immediately began to panic, attempting to free herself of her situation.

She was tied to a chair, and judging by the open door perhaps five feet away, the chair had come from one of the abandoned rooms.

Suddenly, someone stepped out of the door, and as her eyes had not yet grown accustomed to the darkness, the only thing she could make out was the shape of her attacker, and the glistening knife that this person was holding in their right hand…

"Oh, God, no…" Brittany began, now struggling more forcefully against the restraints, shaking the chair and the floor as she did so.

"Oh God yes," the angry, almost hissing voice came back at her. Upon hearing the voice, Brittany's flesh broke out into gooseflesh. She had never heard a voice like it – dirty, almost grating, the sound of pure malevolence and bad intent.

A hand came down on the top of her head, attempting to stop her frenzied movement in the chair – and just like that, Brittany was aware of the fact that her eyes had adjusted to the dark, as the first thing she saw was the reflection of her own terrified eyes looking back at her from the knife a mere inches away from her face…

* * *

It had been almost a week since the three young boys had decided to enter her home, dooming themselves to the same fate that she herself had been doomed to in her previous life.

_One very long week…_

While she had enjoyed the frenzied feast that the opportunity of yet another group of thrillseeking teenagers had afforded her, it had only temporarily sated her. In the early days of what she only thought was an incredible power, as opposed to a curse, she had been aware of the limitations that were enforced on her. She could only kill those that she saw. The rules of the afterlife had been apparent to her fairly early on that she was constricted to one place. It hadn't surprised her – it had been a central theme in the many stories of traditional Japanese ghosts she had heard as a little girl, both from her grandparents and her mother.

_My mother,_ Kayako thought. _Ironic, isn't it Mother? You spent years casting evil spirits away from others, and in that process, you've only created something that even you couldn't destroy – me. _

When the American girl had brought her to this place, Kayako had been more than aware that her situation was changing, morphing. She enjoyed greater freedom of movement, and from this tall building, she could see some of the magnificent sights that the city of Chicago had to offer during the nighttime hours, when her power seemed to be greater. A few times, she had even tested the restrictions that the apartment building seemed to have on her. Once, it had even let her pass approximately ten feet beyond the front door, but then, just as it always happened whenever she had attempted this in her Japanese home, she found herself back at square one – namely, the third floor apartment where the American girl had lived.

_One week, one long week – how I yearn for more, for more blood, for more screams, for the look in their eyes when they see me, especially at that moment when they realize in horrific realization that there is no possibility for escape…_

About thirty minutes ago, Kayako heard the sound that she desired most – the opening of the front door.

She had been watching them ever since. There were two this time, and in a sight that Kayako had initially found strange, she was aware of the fact that one of these people was unconscious. The other – a tall, lanky figure, whose face was covered by a black skimask – was half lifting, half dragging the other person into the apartment complex. The unconscious girl was strikingly beautiful – young, with long brown hair, tight-fitting blue jeans that so many young, pretty American girls preferred.

As such, however, Toshio had quickly grown disinterested with these new potential playthings. Toshio didn't like girls, especially younger ones. In a way, this pleased Kayako – the young girls were her favorite.

There had always been a period of time when Kayako was free to watch, but not intervene. Over time, this period had grown shorter and shorter, but it had never been shorter than a day when she was able to act out on her violent urges after acquiring a target. In a way, she enjoyed the process. It built up anticipation – anticipation of the killing, yes, but also anticipation of emotion, of seeing these people's lives, their families, the people that would cry and weep after they were gone, the way nobody had done for her. So, for the past half hour, Kayako had watched.

The masked figure had quickly tried all of the doors, looking for one that was open, and had finally found one on the second floor. The figure quickly removed a small wooden chair that this particular family had left behind and taken it out in the hallway, and using a thick piece of cable from a backpack strapped around her midsection, bound the girl to the chair.

It had been quite a show since then…

The figure had removed its skimask, and Kayako had been very surprised by what she saw. But more than anything, she admired what she saw. The worksmanship, the skill, the pure delight that this person took in what she was doing the young, beautiful girl.

The blood spurting from the open wound as the knife plunged into the girl's shoulder, the screams of pain emanating from her gaping mouth…

The increased ferocity of the killer, continuing to stab into the girl's most sensitive areas – her breasts, her kneecaps, her private regions…

And finally, the coup de grace, as the killer finally became one with her implement of death, as it sank into the girl's forehead, slicing straight downward through the length of her pretty face…

Normally, when people came into her home, it was in some feeble attempt to cheat death, to achieve some sort of lasting notoriety or to gain some story to tell to impress the people in their lives, which would be all-too-brief from that point on.

This was the first that Kayako had seen someone else not only in the act of doing what she loved to do so much, but perhaps even enjoying it more than she did.

At the moment of the girl's death, Kayako found herself both hating and admiring the killer, for the ability to exist in this world, free of the rules of her own world, free to inflict this on anyone – perhaps even people who weren't unfortunate enough to wander into some sort of private trap.

But one thought comforted her.

_From this moment on, this person's fate is tied with mine – I am where she is, and I see what she sees…_


	5. Brian

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge" or any characters from the films. Constructive criticism and feedback is welcome.

**Brian**

"You're never going to believe who this is," said Jessica, re-entering the operating room, her surgical mask still covering her face.

"Who?" said Brian, looking up from the torn-open body in front of him, focusing on something other than his own blood-splattered gloves for the first time in seemingly hours.

"The Police Commander's daughter."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"I just ran the name. Brittany Shay, the daughter of David Shay, our humble police leader who's been serving in the position since 2004."

"Why did you have to go and tell me that for?"

"What do you mean?"

"Here I was, just enjoying this perfectly fine cadaver, and you have to go introduce Chicago politics into it."

Brian raised his eyes again, hoping to see some kind of reaction in Jessica. The telltale furrowed brows indicating that she was giving him that patented "oh, shut up" mannerism, maybe even a few stifled laughs. There were neither.

"Yeah, well I don't like this one bit," she said, walking back to the operating table. Brian looked down again, attempting to concentrate on the work.

_Jesus, I've been staring at a torn-open chest cavity for over ten hours now…_

Brian remained silent, allowing Jessica to finish her remarks. When it didn't come, he pressed the issue.

"Why's it bother you?"

"This is the Commander's daughter."

"Yeah, you said that already. So what? Means we might get a very high-profile visitor later. Maybe we can get promoted the hell out of here."

"That's not what I mean. I mean, this guy…"

"The Slasher?"

"Yeah. The Slasher. God, could they have possibly come up with a more trite name? Second City Slasher. It sounds like something in one of those Z-grade horror flicks that you used to watch all the time back when we were in med school."

"I'll have you know that I learned a lifetime's worth of survival techniques from those movies. For starters, never go out for a weekend getaway at some secluded lakeside haven with a bunch of friends. Since I was in college at the time, the danger would have only been quadrupled."

_There it is, _Brian thought. _The furrowed brows._

"So seriously," Brian continued, "what's got you so scared about this?"

"The Slasher could have targeted her. Which means he's crafty. He could also be targeting us."

"That's ridiculous."

"How so?"

"Serial killers take targets of opportunity. I'm sure that Miss Shay here was just walking the streets at night, zigged when she should have zagged, and then the guy that the press just adores right now snatched her up."

"That's a pretty big coincidence."

"Life is all about coincidence, Jess," he said, slicing open Brittany Shay's exposed stomach with a scalpel. In a few moments, he would make it through the organ's outer linings for that very tedious, disgusting, and monotonous exercise that nonetheless was required for an autopsy – the stomach contents. "One minute you can be invisible, the next minute you're smeared across the pavement in the middle of 41st street."

"That's a comforting thought, Brian."

"I'm full of 'em."

* * *

_It's funny,_ Brian thought to himself, staring at the drawer that now was the temporary home of one Miss Brittany Shay, _when you take it into consideration, we're all just babies waiting to get back into the womb. _

They had finished with the autopsy about half an hour ago. He had offered to stay behind and sterilize the operating room, while Jessica had gone up to the reception desk and began the tedious ritual of typing reports. Brian hated the reports. It reduced a human life to nothing more than a clinical series of questions, of completely irrelevant fill-in-the-box dynamics.

It reminded him of his sister, and that long-ago night when they didn't have any answers for why Autumn Mills hadn't awoken from her peaceful sleep on that fateful morning. The only answer they had came from a highlighted box in the mammoth autopsy report the family had seen a few days later.

The report that had sent him on the path away from baseball, and towards medicine. The irony was not lost on him that he was here, all these years later, a vital cog in the process of churning out the very report that had haunted him for years.

His mind turned again to Jessica. He had strong feelings for her; on a few occasions, he had even wrestled with the idea that he was in love with her, but he had always quickly pushed back those emotions. It would never work out between himself and Jessica; for starters, they worked side-by-side, for extremely long periods of time. He had heard from more than a few of his friends that workplace relationships were doomed to failure.

_When you find your pie in the same restaurant that you work at, you get constipated. _The wit and wisdom of one of his college friends, still at the back of his mind.

Once again pushing his feelings aside, Brian thought back to their evening's autopsies. Some kid who turned up dead in the middle of the night (_sound familiar, Bri-boy?_) and the goddamn Second City Slasher's newest victim. And the police Commander's daughter, for Christ's sake.

_Lucky me._

While they had ascertained the cause of death of the first body, something about it still didn't seem right to him. There was absolutely no evidence in the body of Jason Unger that would suggest a pre-existing condition that would lead to cardiac failure. No partial blockage of an artery, no thickening of the blood, no previously undetected circulatory disease that would make something remotely likely for such a young, healthy kid. For all intents and purposes, it seemed apparent to Brian that something had just decided to come and take Jason Unger away from this Earth.

Something woke him from his reverie of thoughts – voices. One familiar, and one unfamiliar. The tinges of Jessica's vocal chords were more than apparent from the end of the hallway at the other side of the door, but the other one – a lower, slightly dramatic male voice – was not.

Brian cast one last glance back at the operating room, then flipped off the lights and stepped out the door.

* * *

"Hi, I'm Detective Ness," the early-'30s man in the suit who bore more than a passing resemblance to Jude Law said. _At least he doesn't have the English accent,_ Bran thought. "You must be Brian Mills."

"Yeah, I would be. Detective Ness. First name Elliot?"

"You have no idea how often I've heard that one," he said, laughing lightly, smiling a big, beaming PR grin. "Tyler Ness."

He held out his hand for Brian to shake. He accepted the gesture.

_Of all the people I expected to see in this place, it's not this guy. Is he a Detective or a friggin' Deodorant model? _

Brian, despite a steady career made of stifling emotions, found himself slightly jealous of Detective Ness. He was a handsome dude, yes, but he was also clearly athletic, most likely a football player in high school turned grown-up police officer. Two things that girls love.

Remembering the other person in the equation, Brian looked to his right. Jessica was seated next to Julie at the reception desk, looking at Ness – standing behind the desk, arms crossed, a fixed, steely gaze marking his demeanor - intently. He had not caught any of the conversation on his walk down the hallway, but he was able to ascertain that due to the importance of their victim, someone had seen fit to send Mr. Ness for information gathering purposes.

"How did you know my name?" Brian suddenly said.

"They sent me the whole report on your autopsy unit," he said. _The PR smile returns._

"So what, you want to know what we found?"

"Commander Shay, as I'm sure you know, has a very personal interest in this case."

"I'm sure he does," Brian said.

"He also wants to know if there is anything here that you can use to identify the person who did this."

"All we know is what should already be pretty well-known," Brian said. "The face wound was the kill shot. All the rest occurred pre-death. This Slasher definitely likes to have some fun beforehand."

"There wasn't anything else unusual?" Tyler asked.

"No," Brian said. "Nothing at all. Just a straightforward slash-and-dash to me."

"I figured as much. So did the Commander. Looks like we're going to have to wait for all the work-up on this one."

"You know, that takes about four weeks," Brian said.

"Not this one," Tyler responded, uncrossing his arms. "We're getting this one on the fast-track."

"What do they expect to find?" Jessica asked.

"The Commander isn't sure yet. But…he wants it. Bad. Understandable."

"Definitely," Brian said.

"I'll be in touch with both of you," Tyler said, holding out his hand again for the two doctors to shake. Jessica stood up, taking it first, followed by Brian.

_And I see the PR smile one more time,_ Brian thought.

"Good night," Tyler said, before walking the other way, pushing his way through the doors separating their unit from the rest of the hospital. There was silence for a few seconds, and it was Jessica's voice that broke it.

"He got here just a couple minutes before you got out here."

"What did he ask you?" Brian said, turning to Jessica and moving in front of the reception desk.

"Really minute details," she said, standing up to face him.

"How minute?"

"We're talking follicles found under her fingernails and what material was found in between her teeth kind of minute."

"Can't say I blame the Commander. I'm not a father, but if I was, and if I had his kind of power, I'd have the same interest."

A few moments of silence passed between them, as Brian lost himself in his own thoughts.

"What's wrong, Brian?" Jessica said. _God, I hate it when she gets that concerned look on her face…_

"Nothing, it's just…something seems off about this. Like something that I've missed."

"We did it the same way we always do. We didn't miss anything."

"It's not that. Not the autopsy, I mean. It's something else. Something trivial."

* * *

It had been 4:00 a.m. when Brian Mills had arrived at home – a nice two-bedroom place in the heart of the city, conveniently close to Mercy Hospital – and although he was both mentally and physically exhausted, he still did not sleep.

Instead, he had spent the past hour scouring the internet for the connection that he knew existed. He knew he had heard the similarities of these cases somewhere before.

And he was right.

The apartment murders from a few months ago, the case that he had read about virulently when the news broke. An entire family found butchered in the building, with the youngest son in the family now residing in a mental institution. The best part was what the little guy said did this to his family – a ghost, of all things.

But there was more.

The autopsy report. Before leaving, Brian had broken more than a few laws and made copies of the documents. The address seemed to bore into his skull when he read it, comparing it to the notes readily available for the world to see on the world wide web.

It matched. Apartment building murder central was the same building that Brittany Shay's body had been found in.

But there was _more._

The bits of grisly details that both the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times just loved to divulge were nearly identical to the facts surrounding the strange death of Jason Unger (with the exception of the family father, who apparently got his head bashed in by a slightly insane mother). Heart failure. No pre-existing conditions that fit the profile of the classic heart attack victim.

Somehow, all of this was connected…

It was 6:00 a.m. when Brian Mills finally drifted off to sleep. Fittingly, it wasn't the thoughts of death, apartment buildings, and serial murderers keeping him awake – but rather thoughts of Jessica Harper, wondering how and if she would be affected by all this, and if he would be strong enough to protect her if something arose from their suddenly complicated lives to threaten her.


	6. Shawn

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge," or any characters from the films. Feedback and constructive criticism is welcome.

**Shawn**

_This stupid thing is all anybody talks about anymore._

Shawn changed the channel in disgust. More Slasher news. Apparently, another one of the great unwashed had gone up and gotten themselves killed. It had been a week since the Police Commander's daughter had been one of the victims. Now it seemed like the dude was riding high; he couldn't get enough. Last night, an 28-year-old banker, found in her own home by her boyfriend. The news folks wouldn't release the details of this one.

_Giant *sigh*._

After a minute of searching for something vaguely interesting as background noise, she settled on the last two innings of the Cubs-Astros game. The Cubs were losing.

_Yet another giant *sigh*._

The events of the previous evening played out in Shawn McCurdy's head. It had been a long, hard road to her current whereabouts. While she didn't consider herself a prostitute, she was someone who had given up all semblance of feeling that the nine-to-five world was where satisfaction was had. There had only been two men tonight. Two very dumb men, as they had offered to pay the first price she had quoted when driving past the hordes of other streetwalkers in one of the seedier parts of the city. From there, it had been a quick visit to the local drug dealer, and then a leisurely six-block walk to the Sleep-Eazy Motel, none of the usual Chicago tourist landmarks visible in the background in this cesspool, which served as nothing more than a place of privacy so she wouldn't have to risk satisfying her habit in the company of others.

_When did it get to be like this?_

Once upon a time, Shawn McCurdy had been someone with a bright future. The daughter of a small-town Indiana businessman (no mother – she had died in a car crash when she was eight years old), the path seemed very clear for her – college at UC, an accounting or bookkeeping position, eventually taking over her father's clothing store in Bloomington.

Until the night of the party. Her college friends had decided to take her to one of the wilder soirees at the sprawling dorm complex of UC, and against her better judgment, the conscience had lost that night and the desire to be cool had won over. That night, it had been a sniff of cocaine. Within a week, it was methamphetamine. Now, almost nine years later, it was a combination of those two, but the sniffing had been the first thing to go. It hadn't been enough for her. The marks on her inside of her right arm told the story. And just like that, the planned future for Shawn McCurdy had vanished – the graduation with honors, the typical whitebread family and kids, and the small-town clothing operation.

She stood up, looking at her surroundings. To be fair, they weren't much – dirty walls, a bed no doubt privy to some unholy acts, small TV on the opposite side of the room from the bed, bathroom to her right. She walked to the bathroom, slinging the backpack that had been on her person all night off her right shoulder and onto the sink table.

Shawn saw a weary face looking back at her from the mirror. Ten years ago, she had been strikingly pretty, a runner-up for prom queen, and the object of affection of more than a few of those strong, strapping farm boys in Indiana. To be fair, she still saw some of that. Her hair was naturally blonde, dyed red, her skin was smooth, she was still tall and lithe. But her eyes told the whole story to anyone who didn't reside in her present world. Sunken, constantly bloodshot. They were, as her few streetwalking compatriots referred to it, crack eyes.

_So it's come to this…_

Shawn remembered why she was here, then quickly unzipped her backpack. Inside was, in essence, her whole world – a few basic cleaning supplies, an Illinois State identification card, and a few cans of soup. And, of course, the most important objects – her fix kit.

She pulled out what she was looking for – a small baggie of cocaine, carefully measured and sold to her not two hours ago by a dealer affectionately known as Big D to the downtown prostitutes, a brown cloth strip, a spoon, and a lighter.

She quickly undid the pouch of cocaine, took a few pinches of the contents, and placed it on top of the spoon. Holding it up in front of her face, she popped the lighter underneath it, watching the concoction come to a boil and meld into an easily-absorbed liquid.

A few moments later, the cloth was tied around her upper arm, and her varicose vein swollen in greedy anticipation of what was coming next.

After injecting the cocaine, Shawn let out yet another _Giant Sigh,_ not out of frustration or boredom, but of relief, and finally walked back to her hotel bed and sat there, looking at the remainder of the Cubs' game, her eyes dilated and her mind racing.

* * *

_What the…_

Shawn felt it again – a splash of water on her face, this one pronounced enough to lull her out of the sleep that she had no doubt been in for over 12 hours. After crashing from her cocaine high, she had climbed into the hotel bed, confident she would be there for a long time (and even having the foresight to pay for a two-night stay yesterday).

What she didn't expect was the company of someone else.

She attempted to move her hands, and was then aware of the restraints at her wrists and feet. Something that had only previously heard about but never seen, a ball gag, was shoved inside her mouth, preventing her from making any sound. The back of her tank top was rubbing – hard – against something else. Finally, her eyes completely registered everything around her, and she didn't like what she saw.

An open window on one side of the room told her most of the story. The rest was apparent by her current situation. The room's small, wooden chair had been pulled next to the bed, where she had been placed and restrained.

Shawn attempted to register more of the room, and found herself unable to move her head very far in either direction with any sort of precision. Obviously, she had been drugged by something other than cocaine. Little did this person know that she had run more chemicals through her system in the last ten years than a pharmaceutical company. Now that she was awake, she was reasonably certain that she could shake herself out of the doldrums fairly quickly.

A figure stepped into her field of vision – in her current bleary state, all Shawn could see was a blackness, the TV visible in the background behind the figure's left shoulder. Whoever it was, they were wearing a skimask. Suddenly, it spoke.

"You like cheating death?" it said. In her own mind, the voice sounded completely nondescript, almost like a whisper. "Wait'll you get a piece of me…"

Something else became apparent in Shawn's drug-infused mind – a sudden white light, and a light flash in front of her left eye.

_A knife…_

The whiteness moved closer and closer, then down, out of her field of vision. She felt it then – cool, smooth steel against the skin above her breasts – but it did nothing to reassure her. Much more than the last night she remembered – a man with a torture fetish was involved – it scared the ever-living crap out of her.

* * *

In the past week, Kayako had been to all of the places that the killer inside her house had been. It had been more than enough time for her to claim another victim, but for some reason, she didn't. She enjoyed watching the killer in action. Like herself, the thirst seemed to be unquenchable. There had been another one last night, and she had observed, and admired, the skill that the killer utilized in gaining entry to a private home without all of the advantages she enjoyed.

More than anything, she enjoyed watching what the killer _did_ to the attractive girl in her own home. The pre-death slicing, the joy in inflicting pain, and finally the coup de grace moment when the killer lost patience, decapitating the woman with one clean, skillful swipe from a longer knife.

She felt a sense of kinship with this person. She saw the places that they were required to hole up in – a series of hotel rooms and flat houses not very different from the one they were in right now.

_Just like me, this is someone who was the victim of great injustice…_

More than anything, Kayako felt that, of all the people who had unknowingly acquired a new constant companion in the form of herself, this was an individual who didn't deserve the fate that was now thrust upon them.

_She also feels rage…she will _understand_ me…_

Last night, Kayako had felt a strange change take place. The predicament she was in appeared to be changing – her movement appeared to be much more fluid, free. For the first time since Takeo had taken her life, she had been able to make an effect on something – anything – that did not fit the parameters that had been set for her.

When the killer was poised for the final slash, Kayako had focused all of her energy on the knife, thrusting forward with all of her might along with the killer. And she had touched it. She had affected a change in something that was not part of her admittedly small world, and for the first time, she had killed – or at least assisted in the killing – of someone who had not made the freewill decision to enter her domain.

As the killer traced a grotesque pattern of cuts on the drug addict's face (Kayako knew she was a drug addict – she had seen people just like this in Japan), there was only one thought running through her mind. She wanted to do it again.

* * *

With everything in her, Shawn had been struggling against both her restraints and the mouth gag for the past five minutes. The figure in the skimask had slit tiny criss-crosses of cuts on her face during that time. Her feet had pounded the floor – so the killer had kicked her chair backward, leaving her with no chance of alerting anyone, no means of saving herself.

She thought back to the previous nine years of her life. While that period had existed in a kind of hyper sped-up haze, with no time to think about change or regret, Shawn suddenly thought of her father. The last time she had seen him was seven years ago, when she had already been well into her drug addiction. He had yelled at her; he had even slapped her, calling her a disgrace, wanting to call the treatment center that moment and send her away.

She had cursed him out, walked out the door, and shut him out of her life.

Now, she wanted nothing more than to walk back into her childhood home, hear his voice, and enjoy one of his trademark awful cups of coffee.

_Please God,_ Shawn thought, feeling the knife peel away from her forehead one final time, the blood dripping down into her eyes, blinding her, _if you get me out of this, I'll change, I swear I'll change…_

Shawn blinked. Some of the blood cleared away, and she was suddenly fully aware for the first time, whatever drug was running through her system now at bay.

The killer was raising the knife high over her head, in the beginning stages of plunging it down directly into her temple.

She closed her eyes and braced herself for the worst, hoping the pain would be short…

Then Shawn heard a metallic _clang_ to her left, obviously the sound of the knife falling out of the killer's hands.

"What the hell…" came the voice from above her. Shockingly, the voice was now fully legible, and Shawn was well-aware that the voice was female. Gruff and low, but definitely female.

Shawn gathered her courage, and looked upward. The killer still wore the skimask, but something in her had changed. The audacity had been taken out of her actions, but only for a moment. She reached downward for the knife again, grabbed it, and raised it high overhead again.

This time, Shawn did not waver. She saw what happened. The knife appeared to be headed for its target, but at the last possible moment, it slid out of its master's hand.

"_Shit!" _came the voice from above – now more feminine, more panicked, and more high-pitched.

And then another sound. For the first time in Shawn's life, the sound comforted her, even soothed her.

Police sirens.

The killer turned her steely gaze back toward Shawn for a few moments, then stood up, quickly running to the open window at the back of the hotel room. In one motion, the skimasked figure hoisted herself up on the ledge and vanished out of sight. Shawn's intuition told her that the person, whoever the hell she was, was definitely a professional thief. No normal person could scale a window in the manner she had just seen.

As the sirens grew louder, obviously coming from outside the hotel, Shawn felt a dull resignation surge over her. She let her head smack against the hard wood floor, the weak pain already emanating from the dozen long cuts lining her face.

Then she felt tears well up in her eyes, and for the first time since the day she had walked out on her father, she did not block their progress.


	7. Tyler

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge," or any characters from the films. Feedback and constructive criticism is welcome.

**Tyler**

"So what exactly were you doing in that hotel, anyway?" Tyler said.

"What, you want me to spell it out for you?" Shawn answered, rolling her eyes. _I've had that expression way too much lately,_ Tyler thought. "I was there to get lit."

_I figured as much._

Tyler had been worried the minute they had gotten the call. Not because he thought that the call was a false one – the owner of the establishment they had been called to had actually been very helpful to the police over the years, considering the hotbed of illegal activity that had been going on in the rooms – but because he was reasonably certain that the victim would turn out to be someone like Shawn.

Namely, an addict. They had found her on the floor of one of the second floor rooms, still bound to a wooden chair, a small pool of blood collected underneath her head. He didn't even need to run the tests – she had cocaine in her system, along with God knows what else. Her eyes told the rest of the story – _this girl has done meth _– and along with whatever the killer had drugged her with, it was debatable that they would be able to get much of anything worthwhile.

But he had to try. The Commander was still incensed about the whole thing, and without question, whoever broke this case would be in line for a big promotion. So far, so good – Miss Shawn McCurdy was honest.

Tyler cast a look to his right, to the one-way window. No doubt there were two of the Commander's underlings behind that very pane of glass, eager to report back to their boss with any and everything that Tyler was able to get from Shawn. The white lights over their heads bore down on them like some sort of oppressive sun – Shawn on one side of the table, Tyler on the other. Since they had found Shawn, she had showered and cleaned up, but still wore the clothes they had found her in – a tank top and blue jeans. She had refused stitches for any of her wounds.

_Well, now for the extremely unfun scenario…_

"Do you know how long you were there?"

"I'm guessing more than twelve hours. The night that I got there—"

"Wednesday."

"Yeah, Wednesday, I shot up, watched TV for a few hours and passed out."

"We found you at 2:00 a.m. on Friday morning."

"Jesus Christ, I was out for that long?"

"Yeah, you were. How much coke did you shoot?"

"What does this matter?"

"It matters for your own safety, Shawn."

"I'm not being prosecuted for anything?"

"Trust me, considering the circumstances, the Commander himself will probably give you the key to the city if you can give us something that will lead to us catching this person."

"You're sure that it was the Slasher?"

"It fit the profile. Break-in, binding, pre-mortem injuries inflicted on the victim."

As he said this, Shawn raised a hand to her face, feeling the cuts zigzagging across her face like some kind of grotesque road map. Tyler could sense that at one point Shawn McCurdy had been a pretty girl, and that she still held some semblance of vanity for her appearance. Coupled with her no-nonsense manner and honesty, Tyler found himself immediately liking Shawn. It pleased him – he found it easier to extrapolate information from someone that he didn't want to choke the life out of.

"There was something new this time, Shawn," he said. "He drugged you."

"Yeah, I know. When I woke up, I could tell something was off."

"How so?"

"I've been high enough times to know the feeling of a drug. This was like nothing I'd ever had. Did you guys find out what it was?"

"Valium."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The urine sample you gave had valium all over it."

"Somebody slipped me a date rape drug?"

"Apparently."

"I don't remember anything. One minute I was drifting off to sleep, the next somebody had be in the middle of the room gagged like some S&M perv."

"My guess is that the killer injected it into your system. You could have been so out that you didn't even notice. And even if you did, there have been cases where valium has caused memory loss."

"Jesus…" Surprisingly, Shawn seemed very surprised by someone's ability to completely incapacitate her. No doubt, she considered herself very smart on her feet – and Tyler was sure she was – but this person was that much better.

"So don't you want to know what I saw?" Shawn suddenly said.

"Was the drug still affecting you when you came to?"

"Yeah. At first, I wasn't able to see anything. But it cleared up a little. I can't help you much with appearance, because she was wearing a skimask the whole time…"

"Did you say she?"

"Yeah."

"The killer is a female?"

"Yeah."

"How do you know that?"

"She said a few things. About how she was going to cut me up, and all that shit. It was a female voice."

"You're sure of that?"

"Positive."

"It could have been the drugs."

"It wasn't the drugs, Detective Ness."

"How do you know that?"

"They'd started to wear off by the time she was ready to do it. You know, to kill me. She talked some more. It was definitely female. Why does that surprise you so much?"

"Female serial killers are very rare."

"How rare?"

"Very. About five percent. It's just that all the people that they've called in have given the profile that this is some big, lonely white guy in his '40s acting out his rage against women."

"Well, they're wrong."

"I'll say. Were you able to see the killer escape?"

"Yeah. I saw. When the sirens popped, she went out the back window. That's another thing – I'd be willing to bet that your Slasher is a thief."

"Good climber?"

"Very. Looked like she'd done it plenty of times."

"That was another thing the profile said was highly likely. It's just that we never thought…"

"That it was a chick. I got it."

"Thank you, Miss McCurdy. You've been very helpful."

While he usually didn't make this part of his interview repertoire, Tyler held out his hand for Shawn to shake. She accepted it.

He got up, and began walking out of the room.

"Hey, Detective Ness?"

Tyler turned around. Shawn was still seated at the table, looking at him with an expression that indicated many things. Anticipation, sadness, grief.

"Yeah?"

"Did you call my father like I asked?"

"He's on his way as we speak to pick you up."

"Did he sound…angry?"

"I'm sure he just wants to see you, Shawn."

"It's been a long time."

"Everything will be fine. I guarantee it."

"I hope so."

Shawn turned her head down. Unable to think of something to say, Tyler turned around again, opening the door and exiting the interview room.

* * *

It was 3:00 a.m., and Tyler was already in the motion of removing his tie before he opened the door of his apartment.

He entered, throwing his tie on top of his dining room table, taking off his suit jacket and also throwing it on top of the table. He stepped past the table into his kitchen, which hadn't seen a whole lot of maintenance in the time since this whole Second City Slasher nonesuch had began.

Tyler was hungry. He opened the refrigerator. A pizza box and a jug of orange juice greeted him, and nothing else. He removed the pizza box from the fridge and opened it – there were two slices of an onion-mushroom mix left, and while he didn't remember how old they were, anything sounded good right now. He took them out and began eating without heating them.

Stepping out of the kitchen and rounding the corner into his living room – computer desk on one side, television on the other – Tyler thought of the previous two weeks. His profile had been accepted by the Chicago Police Department. Female, mid-to-late '20s, professional thief, likely past involving drug or alcohol abuse, likely childhood involving a domineering or abusive mother, hence the anger against other women. That had been two weeks ago.

The Commander had decided to keep the information that Shawn had provided away from the media. Tyler had spoken to Mr. Shay once since his daughter had been one of the Slasher's victims, and it had been an experience that he did not want to repeat until after this sick individual was behind bars. Commander Shay had buried all of his grief with anger, and he didn't want to risk his vengeance on anything, even if it meant the Slasher taking another victim. He didn't want the killer to panic and leave town upon seeing her profile plastered all over the news, and while more than a few of his advisers had tried to convince him of an alternate course of action, this was the way it was.

Today had been a long day of following leads (_if you want to call them that_). The Department had set up an anonymous tip line, and after eight hours of talking to various freaks who insisted that they knew who the killer was (including one nut who said that JFK was alive and well and orchestrating the murders), Tyler had gone back to the Station, scouring the patrol reports for anything that seemed off.

_When is this going to be over…_

Suddenly, the telltale vibration of his cell phone broke the silence of his apartment. Tyler stepped back to his dining room table, and grabbed the phone from his jacket pocket. The Caller I.D. said "Mark" – which would be Mark Redding, a longtime friend and another of the Detectives assigned full-time to the case.

He flipped his phone open.

"Hello?"

"Tyler," Mark's cocksure, slightly inebriated voice said from the other side of the phone, "You're never going to believe this, but…"

"Please tell me you have something."

"We have something."

"What is it?"

"There was another one tonight."

"Oh, God – another…"

"No death. She got away. Name is Laura Kettelson, got attacked in her own home about an hour ago. Only thing is that the neighbors heard the scream. One of them went over there with a gun…"

"Holy shit, don't they know that we told…"

"I don't think they care. This thing is at a fever pitch."

"So what happened?"

"Well, this guy goes into her house with the gun and scares the Slasher off. We have Laura in custody right now."

"So?"

"So she left the car she used to get there at the scene."

"You're not making…"

"It's got her prints all over it, Tyler."

Tyler's eyes went wide, he stopped chewing his pizza, and the sudden need to pump his fist arose from within his gut. "Are they good?"

"They're immaculate," Mark said excitedly. "Our killer got overconfident. Didn't wear gloves this time."

Silence filled the room once again.

_It's almost over,_ Tyler thought. _Just a few more steps and a lucky break, and it's done._


	8. Jill

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge" or any characters from the films. Feedback and constructive criticism is VERY welcome.

**Jill**

The City of Chicago is not a city known for its high levels of crime and urban decay. While it was perhaps the most notorious town in America during the 1920s bootlegging years, in the mind of the current U.S.A. resident, Detroit and New York City are the great centers of debauchery in the western world.

Located along the West side of the city, however, is the Lawndale neighborhood. One of the poorest areas of the city, Lawndale is a relatively small area of Chicago, but its impact is felt in the reputation that bringing up its name has on the average citizen of the city, along with the numbers – most of them negative – that it brings to the city's annual reports. Drug dealing, mugging, and gang activity are not merely the norm for large sections of the North and South neighborhoods, but seemingly the rules of the land. Fittingly, it's an area of Chicago that is almost never visited by the slack-jawed tourists who stick to the relative safety of the sprawling Piers and Parks that pepper the North and East landscapes.

It was from this place that she came, silent as a ghost and dangerous as a poisonous snake. This neighborhood had been her home for the past six years. She was a thief by trade, but had picked up a few temporary side jobs over the years. Drug runner, spy for a mafia kingpin, even one-time paid killer. First and foremost, however, the act of entering homes – often the high-priced, expensive-looking homes in parts of the city far away from her current residence – and taking whatever she felt like had always been the primary source of her livelihood.

She woke up, looking around at her squalid apartment located above an extremely skuzzy laundromat. It was little more than a room – a bathroom, which hadn't been cleaned in over six months, was tucked away in the back corner of the room, a pile of newspapers were stacked on the floor from her double bed all the way to the door. There was no television, no computer and no freezer. She rarely kept food longer than a day. Just as she did with everything else in her relatively small everyday life, she lived in the moment.

She got up and walked to the bathroom sink, splashing some cold water on her face to shake the haze of sleep away from her mind and body. She showered, dressed in her usual clothes – a black Nike jacket, about five years old, and blue jeans – and stepped outside, then down the stairs, and finally into the streets of Lawndale.

Jill Robbie knew that today was going to be one of the days. She was very aware that the incubus inside her operated like a fuse on a stick of T.N.T. – it started out far away from the explosion, inching closer and closer until something inside shouted danger, leaving everyone around to either scatter, or stay and be obliterated. The flame had been traveling closer and closer to its destination for four days now.

_Four days, and now I'm in the hunt again…_

The period between the attacks had grown shorter and shorter since she had made the decision to begin her latest secondary career – one that didn't pay with any monetary reward, but rather the reward of seeing her masterpieces played out in the living rooms of the houses that she hated so much. It had been a long time since the first one, which had taken place just a little over six months ago.

Jill thought back to the impetus of her current mission. It had likely begun in South Womack Middle School, one of the poorest schools in the city, but nonetheless one that had its own social caste just like every other institute of lower learning in the continental United States. It hadn't been a fun time for her, enduring constant ridicule and humiliation from the kids who had better clothes, better friends, and an all-around better life than her.

_But look at them now, _Jill thought. _They don't have a whole city looking for them._

Her mind went back further into her own past as she rounded a corner, walking past the neighborhood barber shop. Most specifically, her mother. Jill hadn't seen her in more than a decade. For all she knew, her mother could be dead, finally overtaken by the nonstop train of pills, drinks, and needles that had virtually defined her as a person from her first conscious memory.

The memories of the abuse surfaced in Jill's mind. As she often did, she quickly shoved them back, not wanting anything to cloud her mind.

She continued walking down the street, nodding at Big Mike, the heavyset wannabe rapper who also served as her primary fence. To her right was the small deli owned by a man who was also the neighborhood drug dealer. For a long time, much of Jill's fence money went to this man, primarily for cocaine. She had tried acid once, and the ensuing bad trip – involving a sort of trip into the past where she was once again a little girl, suffering the torment at the hands of her mother – had scared her off any and all future flirtations with the substance. After her first non-paid killing, she had sworn off the cocaine through sheer willpower, wanting to be at peak condition for what she was about to embark on. She was fully aware that this was a suicide mission, that sooner or later, the long arm of the law would catch up with her. But she wanted to put off that inevitable date for as long as possible. She had tried filling the empty time with marijuana, but it just made her paranoid, and after that first bag was used up, she hadn't been back to the world of chemical gratification.

_Why do I do it?_

She had asked herself the question many times over the past six months. Even she didn't know why – she just _did._ She was well-aware of what the scamming psychiatrists and armchair analysts around the city would be saying on the day that she was hauled in, kicking and screaming – she had made up her mind that she wasn't going to make things easy for the cops, even as she was restrained and in a police car – that she was angry at her mother, and that her poor upbringing contributed to the moral decay taking place in her own mind.

The explanations made perfect sense to Jill Robbie, but she thought they were complete, utter crap. Jill Robbie enjoyed killing people. She enjoyed the look of terror on their faces, the glorious red stuff flowing from their wounds as she sliced and diced them, most of all the look of resolve in their eyes as she launched forward with the killing blow, the feeling of detachment as the life drained away from their bodies. The younger, prettier and softer, the better, although other types would do in a pinch.

_Like that no-good druggie bitch, the one that got away…_

Jill looked around at the neighborhood. For a long time, it was rare when she saw the daylight hours. All the action took place at night. In the recent weeks, however, circumstances were different.

_Ever since I took that UC cunt into that old apartment house…_

Like most thieves, Jill Robbie had a sort of sixth sense, a strange, innate ability to know when someone was watching you, when you weren't alone in a room, when there might be someone waiting at the other side of a window, having heard someone pawing around outside, gun at the ready. And she was aware of it now. Not someone. Something. A _presence._

It didn't seem to be malevolent, it didn't seem to be burning into her with bad intent. But it was _there._ She was most aware of it in the nighttime hours, hence her new, nocturnal sleeping schedule. She didn't want to be conscious when it was around, and at its full power.

And it was indeed powerful. Whatever it was, it had tried to assist her in the murder of the drug addict. She had felt something clasp around her hand when she had reared back for the shot that would have no doubt decapitated her, just as she had the other one. Whatever it was, it had scared her to the point where she dropped the knife not once, but twice.

From there, the other things had begun. The strange noises in the middle of the night when she thought she was alone in an alley, looking for fresh prey. The cat that seemed to follow her around wherever she went – and she had never once seen the source of the constant goddamn _meowing_ that seemed to lord over her life like some sort of God. Then there was that strange clicking, popping noise that seemed to crop up at all hours of the day, including once in the company of her fence. Big Mike hadn't heard a goddamn thing.

That weird, bullfrog-like croaking noise had picked up in intensity recently, to the point where she did her best to wear earplugs if it was possible for her to do so, if she wasn't sneaking into someone's house or lurking around the college campuses in the better parts of the city. It had made her make mistakes, mistakes that she hated herself for, the kind of mistakes that only a rookie thief who didn't know their way around the back side of a jail cell would make. She had forgotten to wear gloves on her last mission. For years, gloves had been second nature to her, to the point where the leather around her hands and wrists felt like a second skin. And now, with voices inside her head that, for some mysterious reason, sounded like _animals,_ Jill found herself tripping up.

_They might already know…they might already be running my name through the system, they might know where I live…_

But as the storm of emotions – negative, positive, indifferent – racing through her mind reached a fever pitch, the comfort of that most unexpected target of opportunity soothed her personal hurricane.

_One of _them_ is coming through _here?

There she was – no doubt a student at either IU or UC, driving a fancy car, young, brunette, pretty, wearing big Paris Hilton-style sunglasses, the air of superiority pouring out of her black BMW car. No doubt she was on her way into the neighborhood to stop somewhere – there was no way that she lived anywhere in South Lawndale.

Turning around, already planning the various ways that she could use the maze of alleys, fences and back roads to her advantage due to her years of experience in this section of the urban jungle, Jill Robbie smiled to herself, knowing full well that there would indeed be a new Second City Slasher story on the news tonight.


	9. Healers

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge" or any characters from the films. Feedback and constructive criticism is welcome.

**Healers**

"I'm telling you they have it wrong," Brian said, leaning back against the drawers of cadavers in the back of their operating room. "This is even worse than they think."

"I'm almost afraid to ask," Jessica said.

Brian thought back to the recent events in his life. He hadn't known it at the time, but the two autopsies gracing his operating table almost two months ago had been an impetus, an omen for things to come. It had literally changed Brian's entire world – he had learned a lot in the recent weeks. His nonstop need to know as much as possible, via the news, talk radio, movies and magazines, had always been something that Brian considered a blessing.

But he had found out things that scared him. More than that, it terrified him. There were things in the world that went unseen, things that aren't _meant_ to be known…

"Jessica," Brian finally said, looking at her as she crossed her arms in front of the operating table. As of this moment, they were alone in the room, waiting for a family member to identify their most recent assignment. She wasn't wearing the clothes that he saw her in 99% of the time – hospital scrubs and a surgical mask. For the first time in seemingly months, he saw her in her normal, everday clothes – a Chicago Cubs t-shirt, jeans, and her glasses. Brian couldn't explain it, but he had always been a sucker for glasses on girls. "You know the night that the Detective came in here?"

"Yeah," she said. "What about it?"

"There's something about…that night, that really scares me."

"Hey, look, Brian, I had nightmares after that too. We've been doing this long enough that I figured you'd know that by now. We see some freaky stuff."

"Believe me, you have no idea. Look, forget I said anything, alright?"

Brian turned around, and tried to walk out of the room before Jessica's voice stopped him.

"Brian?" Slight upward inflection, slight nagging tone.

_She knows me too well…_

He turned around.

"Alright, I'm interested. What did you find? And if you say you saw it on CNN, I'm automatically discounting it."

"It's not even how the cops found that body that scares me. It's _where._"

"What are you talking about?"

"What do you know about an abandoned apartment building on 47th street? Ring a bell?"

"Where those murders took place?"

"Like I said. The cops have it wrong. They think that this is human. It isn't."

"Brian, it's Jill Robbie. They have fingerprint evidence to prove it."

Currently, the name of Jill Robbie was plastered all over the TV and newspapers. The Commander had finally relented against public pressure to release his knowledge, and as of two hours ago, they finally had a face to go along with the boogeyman that had haunted this city for the past several months.

"I can't explain that, Jessica, but somehow it's fabricated. Somehow, it scares me even more, because it means this thing is even more powerful."

"Seriously, Brian," she said, shaking her head and turning downward, "you're flaking out here. I don't know what to say."

"Alright, I'll back up. What do you know about curses?"

"Other than that I don't believe in them?"

"Yeah, well you're wrong. I can't say that I blame you. I was right there with you in med school when they try to hammer everything that's unexplainable right out of you. All of these people are trying to pidgeonhole this, just like they do with everything else. They think it's Jill Robbie because that's what it wants you to think. It's a curse."

"I can't believe I'm encouraging this, but a curse of what?"

"It's ju-on," he said.

Brian thought back to the previous three weeks. All of his time away from work – which had not been plentiful lately – had been spent scouring all of his usual – and not so usual – information centers. The news stories themselves had been buried, but they were there, along with the witness statements, the language – and the _victims…_

"Alright, Jessica, I'll work backwards here. They found the body of Brittany Shay in that same apartment building where all those deaths took place. Everybody's so worked up over this goddamned serial murder thing that that fact slipped through the cracks."

"It's easy to see why. They're completely different cases. First of all, there was never anything in those apartment deaths to indicate _murder…"_

"It was. One of them is fact. The stepmother who murdered the husband."

"At any rate, all the other deaths were ruled either heart failures or disappearances."

"And nobody ever even attempted to explain it, Jess. How an entire building full of people died in that way? They didn't. They couldn't explain it. They didn't want the truth. I do."

"So what is it?"

"Ju-On," he said. "That's what it is."

"You said that before."

"It's Japanese. It means curse, or grudge. When someone dies, and they have hate in their heart, all that negative energy gets left behind. The places they lived, the people they knew – it lives on. And anyone who comes across it is cursed."

"Alright, I'll humor you. Who's curse?"

"It's two people. Kayako and Toshio Saeki. A wife and son, murdered by the father of the family almost four years ago in Tokyo. It started with the husband, but it spread. Everyone who went into their house turned up either dead or missing."

"So how does it wind up in this big, spooky apartment building?"

"Allison Winters. Student at one of the English-speaking schools in the country. She went into the house, and brought it back when she came back to the States to be with her family."

"But I thought you said that this – whatever it is – just followed people and killed them…"

"It's getting worse. It escalates. It's like a human being that way. It not only followed Allison – it stayed. And now it's here."

There was a long moment of silence then. There was fear on Jessica's face, but not the kind he wanted. He had wanted genuine terror. He had wanted to comfort Jessica, to remind her that he would always be here for her. Most of all, he wanted her to believe him. The fear he saw on her face was the kind of fear that came from hearing a scary campfire story.

_And now here comes the laugh…_

Almost as if on cue, Jessica turned her head down, moved her hand up to her mouth, and let out a few chuckles.

"I'm sorry, Brian," she said. "This is one of your things, right? I remember the time that you tried to convince me that Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando were brothers."

"This isn't one of those times."

"Really?"

Mustering up all of his bravado, Brian grabbed her hand and stepped forward, now inches from her face. "Yes," he said. "Really."

Another awkward moment of silence passed.

"You really believe this, huh?"

"Yes."

"So how much time did you invest in this, anyway?"

"You don't want to know."

"The sad part is that I didn't even have to ask."

Brian felt Jessica's hand loosen, indicating that she was uncomfortable with the gesture. Not wanting to prolong the experience, he released her hand.

"Jessica, these weren't cranks that I got this information from. These weren't people in basements putting out public access radio shows. These were police reports, autopsy reports. These were all official documents."

Jessica turned around, taking a few steps away from Brian, her body language indicating that she was slightly uncomfortable with the situation. She stopped a few steps away from the door leading out of the operating room.

"Brian, there are no such thing as ghosts," she said, looking him in the eye. "We're doctors. We deal in the world of reality, the world of living and dead. Nothing in between or after."

"That's what I thought, too. Ask Karen and Aubrey Davis about what they believed. Ask Allison Winters. Ask Brittany Shay."

"I can't believe I'm listening to this," Jessica said as she quickly opened the door.

Brian followed her outside into the hallway, quickening his pace to catch up.

"What do you want, Brian?" she said as he grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around to face him once again.

And at that moment, Brian put himself in her shoes. No doubt, coming from the mouth of someone you had known for a long time, everything that he had just said would sound crazy to the average American citizen. Curses, ghosts, Japanese names…

He thought of his own knowledge. There were still a great many things he did not know. He didn't know how this curse had slipped up in the way it had, if you wanted to call it that. He didn't know _how_ it was escalating, and in such a horrifying manner. There had been violent deaths before – the Japanese police report about one of the social workers, Yoko, and how her body had been found _minus her bottom jaw_ had caused him a great deal of sleep loss on the day he had found it – but nothing like these. For the most part, the victims always looked like heart failures.

These? These were butcher jobs.

But it was _them._ It was Kayako and Toshio. There was simply too much evidence out there to support the theory, albeit very hard to find for anyone but the most paranoid.

_You know, people like me._

Brian was terrified. But he realized that the decision to tell Jessica was wrong.

Now something else was taking the place of his need for others to know – the need for _himself_ to know…

"I'm messing around, Jessica," he said, letting go of her shoulder, watching her hands drop to her sides defensively. "I'm joking."

Not surprisingly, a look of first resolve, then rage passed over her face.

Here it comes…

"Brian, you _asshole!_" she yelled, hitting him in the arm with a balled-up fist.

_I gotta say, I expected a lot worse than that._

_

* * *

_Brian sat in his car, just as he had been for the past thirty minutes. Sitting, thinking, and looking.

_There it was…_

After weeks of researching everything that this place had done to multitudes of people – both in its present form and its original form, overseas in some country where everyone who looked like him was referred to as _gai-jin_ – here he was, looking at it in the flesh.

On the outside, the apartment building didn't look so haunting. The only sign from the outside that something was off about this place was the complete lack of activity going on in its windows. Complete darkness from the first floor all the way up to third story.

There were no other cars headed down this street, nobody visible behind him. The building was tucked away at an intersection, but as it seemed just now to Brian, he was completely alone in the middle of Chicago – a rarity in and of itself.

_Almost like this place is a contagious disease…_

_Am I really going to do this?_

The sun was setting. There was no way Brian was going to enter this house in the dark. He had two items in the back seat of his car – a large crowbar and a flashlight.

_Why, Brian?_

In the time spent gathering his nerve for what he was about to do, he thought back to jus why this case – these people, these killers – fascinated him so much. As an autopsy doctor, he dealt with the aftermath of grisly details day after day. And part of him – perhaps his deepest, darkest self – wanted to see those grisly details up close and in person, and the people who perpetrated them.

There was also the emotional side. The side that missed his sister, the side that had never forgiven himself – and those doctors all those years ago – for letting her die. The side that wanted to see her again, and sooner than the day when the deity decided that it was time for him to cross over into the other world.

_Bullshit,_ Brian thought. _It's Jessica. You love her, she'll never love you back, and you want to die, isn't that it, Bri-boy?_

_She didn't believe you…_

He cut off his thoughts, grabbing the crowbar and flashlight. He opened the car door, still wearing his white dress shirt and tie from work, and took the long, solitary walk across the street toward the front door of the apartment building.

As he had expected, there was a large barricade of boards blocking the entrance, windows on either side, complete blackness behind them beckon to him from another world…

He raised the crowbar.

_This might take a while…_

* * *

While Kayako had spent the vast majority of her time recently in the company of Jill Robbie, the minute, the very nanosecond that there was activity in her residence, her consciousness flashed back to those usual, numb surroundings – the empty third floor apartment – with the speed of light.

Someone was downstairs…

While Jill was unaware of it, Kayako knew. The authorities knew about her. She had discovered unparalleled freedom recently, a kind of fluidity that had never before been granted her.

_This city fears her,_ Kayako thought. _She has power to make this entire world quiver like nothing I've ever known, and it's made me _stronger…

If she had intended to kill Jill Robbie, she could have done so weeks ago. But she let her live, not only because she admired her, but because she had grown to crave the changes that the fear she caused was having on her. She was more able to stretch the boundaries of her usual constraints much more than she had even a few weeks ago, drifting over Jill in a radius that seemed to stretch for miles, watching whomever she wanted, being wherever she wanted, able to return to Jill with merely a thought.

She had made a mistake by attempting to assist in the murder of the drug addict. It had made Jill slip. More importantly, it had made her paranoid, causing her to sleep at night, and causing her to do much of her hunting during the daylight hours. Kayako did not like to kill during the day, and neither did Jill; it was better at night. People are more vulnerable, and vulnerability leads to terror. The more scared they are, the more fun it is…

Now, there was another one. Nobody had dared enter this place since Jill had brought the pretty girl here, and now, the man on the first floor had made his way up to the second floor.

_Is it possible that he knows where I live?_

With nothing more than a thought, Kayako was standing in the hallway, looking at him. He was a younger man, perhaps in his early '30s, roughly the same age as she had been when he died. He looked to be an important man, wearing business attire, but carrying a flashlight.

He was all alone. And he looked terrified.

Behind him, she saw Toshio step into her field of vision, also curious as to who this new intruder was.

Suddenly, the flashlight passed over her face. And his eyes widened.

"Oh God—" he said, taking a step backward, stumbling in the darkness.

He hadn't even let his eyes adjust yet…

_He can see me?_

Normally, there was a long grace period between the time when someone was in her presence to the time when they were truly aware that someone was always looking over their shoulder. There had been exceptions – Kayako understood that nothing about her condition was set in stone – but for the most part, it took a few days before her state was able to make the connection with whatever psychokinetic frequency occupied the particular human brain that she coveted, thus resulting in her ability to make anything she wanted happen in the world of her prey.

_But this one already sees me?_

It had never been this quick before, and Kayako seized the opportunity.

Kayako could already tell everything about the man. He had suffered a great loss in his life – a family member. He was in love, just as she had been years ago. And he wanted to die.

The ones that wanted to die were the worst. They didn't appreciate life. And Kayako saw it as her duty to punish those who didn't appreciate something that could be taken from them so savagely…

The man turned around, stumbling, unable to scream – and then he saw Toshio…

He opened up his mouth, the sound of his childhood pet reverberating throughout the hallways. The maneuver always had a very interesting effect on their victims – it both bewildered and terrified them.

As she moved toward him, she was aware of another change – normally, the rules dictated that she was in the state that she had died in as she moved in for a kill. Crawling, bloody, and helpless-looking. But now, she was walking. Even more, so was moving quickly, and without pain.

She was strong, the complete antithesis of what she had been in the months leading up to her death, when she had been subservient, in constant fear of _him…_

Something in her awakened then, as she walked toward the man, the relative darkness of the interior of the apartment building enveloping them slowly. Her senses seemed more alive, more awake than they had ever been, in life or death; her muscles felt stronger, her fingers felt like razor blades.

Jill Robbie had shown her something in the recent weeks. Kayako had known that she enjoyed the act of killing, that while she was still around for the purpose of punishing those careless enough to not respect her residence, she was not a martyr – she enjoyed her work. But Jill followed no rules in her own world. Every rule could be broken.

If she wished it, she could do whatever she wanted – she could move from person to person not by happenstance, by them coming to her.

She could come to _them…_

The man had managed to walk toward the hallway to the stairwell, screaming in terror (_perhaps he doesn't want to die so much now, after all). _Toshio rushed in front of him, tripping him and sending him sprawling on his face toward the floor.

_Now it's just him and me…_

She was inches away from his prone body now, watching him attempt to turn around.

_This one is braver than most…he wants to see me…_

He managed to push himself on his back, then looked at, his eyes burning back into hers.

"Hello, Kayako," is what he said, raising his arms over his head and closing his eyes, ready to die.

"_Hello, Brian-Kun,_" she said in return…


	10. Kayako

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge," or any characters from the films. Reviews, anyone? There's only one chapter to go (after this one, that is).

**Kayako**

Considering the magnitude of the mission, it was a relatively small caravan, but if it had been up to Tyler Ness, the team traveling with him would be even smaller.

Forty-five minutes earlier, they had gotten _the call_. The one they had been waiting for since this entire unholy operation had begun months earlier. Not a crank, not a prank. This was it – a hotel proprietor in North Garfield Park had seen her, and rented a room out to a woman who signed her name as "Jodie Goodell" looking for day-to-day shelter. It was a man who had given the police many helpful tips in the past. They had no reason to question his motives or honesty.

By this point, everyone had seen the face – the two-year-old mug shot of Jill Robbie, short blonde hair, blue eyes, pretty in a rough-and-tough way, her nose pierced and her face a blank, emotionless slate. It had surprised Tyler that a girl who could be classified as "cute" with nary a laugh from his peers could be the face that had caused this city so much goddamned sleep in the recent weeks, but the facts were immutable. The prints were hers. She fit the profile. And her whereabouts were now known. The only thing that Tyler didn't comprehend was why Jill hadn't decided to skip town – she certainly had advance warning.

Right now, there was no time left to think. He looked to his right – Officer Kubel, a man he had just met for the first time half an hour ago, drove the car, while he sat in the passenger seat, looking back once again to the civilian cars with other plain-clothes officers ready to covertly make the snare. There were six of them total – himself, Detective Redding, a Detective David Pierce that he had also just met a few minutes earlier, and a regular officer accompanying the three of them.

He looked to his left – there was one more turn. The two-story hotel was now visible, while scores of Garfield Park residents – just like Lawndale, one of the poorest, crime-ridden sections of the city – walked the streets around them, casting nervous glances on the three nice, white sedans driving down the middle of their street.

_I can't blame them – I'd be paranoid too…_

Tyler removed his gun from his side holster. Like the other Detectives, he wore a bulletproof vest outside his suit jacket, white letters adorning it denoting the wearer as 'POLICE.' He checked the sight, dropped the clip and re-inserted it. It was a nervous habit – one he had been well aware of since his days in Academy training – but one that he had never dropped. It put his mind at ease, whether he was about to take target practice or take down a serial killer.

* * *

The six of them were now directly outside the room. When they had entered the hotel, they had made their way up to the room in the manner that Tyler had arranged with the hotel owner, lightly nodding at him and walking right past the roughshod lobby toward the stairs at the back of the first floor. Single file, they made their way to the second store, and with Tyler in the lead, the officers had gathered outside Room #205.

It was a small hotel, and they had to be careful. There were only ten rooms on each floor, and if they made too much noise, it would either scare Jill off or warn her to pull something out that they didn't want to see, most notably a gun or knife.

But they hadn't made noise. They were completely silent. There were no lookey-lou's in the hallways. Everything seemed perfect.

And now here I am – outside the door, ready to take down the beast.

Ready, Tyler?

He reared back, raising his leg and shoving it forward with all his might at the light wooden door. He heard the satisfying _crack_ as the pane separated from the side, seeing the opening formations of wood splinters out of the corner of his eye, and then the room itself as the door slammed open.

It was a sight he didn't expect to see. No TV on, no shocked jump from their perpetrator, no gun in their collective faces, ready to go out in a blaze of glory.

Instead, Tyler was taken aback for a moment, because of all the things he expected to see, what awaited him on the other side of the door was truly the last thing he thought would be there.

It was Jill Robbie, but in a way, she wasn't there. She sat on the bed, staring at the turned-off television, her window shut, the blinds drawn, the room in almost total darkness. She wore a gray hooded sweatshirt, the hood pulled up under her head, her hair not even visible behind her sunken face. And despite what had to be an Earth-shattering _smack_ from the broken door hitting the wall, she didn't move an inch.

_She's there, but she's not there…_

Tyler cut off his thoughts, shaking off the strangeness of the sight of this vicious serial murderer seemingly resigning herself to her fate, bursting forward and running to Jill. He immediately shoved her backward on the bed and turned her around as the other Detectives and Officers backed him up. He pinned her arm behind her back, removed the handcuffs from his belt, and began putting them on Jill.

She didn't resist. _Not at all…_

"Jill Robbie, you have the right to remain silent," he said, reciting the familiar dialogue by memory, still holding his gun trained on Jill with his right hand while he applied the handcuffs with his left, "anything you say can and will be used in a court of law…"

And as he finished the legal cover-our-own-ass segment of the arrest, Tyler realized that while it was necessary for the A.C.L.U., it was completely unnecessary in a practical sense in this case. She wasn't going to say a thing. She wasn't even going to _do_ anything, and Tyler didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed that this takedown was so uneventful.

_Something scared the shit out of her, _he thought. _Whatever it was, I don't know, but somebody beat us to the punch…_

_

* * *

_"She hasn't moved, bro," Mark said, looking at her through the double-sided window. "Not an inch."

"Damn," Tyler said in return. "She's freaked by something."

Tyler gathered himself for a few moments. It had been a whirlwind of activity since they had entered the hotel room and made the arrest, from the ride back to the Station to the frantic jailing process, not wanting the media to catch wind of the takedown until after they already had the information they wished to divulge to the masses.

_Which means going in there to talk to her…_

Right now, there was only nothingness. He could see Mark in the reflection of the glass – the Detective that he considered his best friend, a longtime work associate and former partner as an Officer. He had added a moustache and about 30 pounds since his promotion, but it was still Mark Redding. Behind the glass was nothing more than a shell.

A figure wearing a sweatshirt and dirty blue jeans, staring into space. Throughout the long ride, she had not resisted or protested, despite the overwhelming anecdotal evidence dictating that a person of Jill Robbie's skill and stature would almost certainly make life miserable for them post-arrest if for no other reason than to seem like a badass to the people that she so longed to impress.

_And she didn't even give us the satisfaction of roughing her up…_

She still had not said a word.

"I'm going in there," Tyler said, holding the information that he hoped would be substantial enough to establish a rapport in his right hand – her rap sheet, her family history, her list of known associates in the robbery business.

"Be careful, bro," Mark said, turning his head and nodding at his friend before Tyler rounded the corner and entered the densely lit interrogation room.

* * *

"I didn't give my name back at the hotel," he said, sitting down across from Jill, scanning the biography for anything that he could use. "Tyler Ness. Detective Tyler Ness."

He held out his hand for Jill to shake. She didn't move an inch – her face still turned downward, her mouth, nose, and eyes still the only part of Jill that was visible underneath the hood of her sweatshirt.

He withdrew the hand.

"Jill, we have substantial evidence that can connect you to the Second City Slasher murders. We have your fingerprints on a vehicle used in one of the attacks. We have eyewitness accounts…"

"Good," she said, finally looking up, her eyes connecting with his. Something in those eyes chilled Tyler to the core.

"You think this is good?"

"I don't want any lawyer," she said. "I don't want to protest this. At all. Just take me away. Take me away from _her…_"

* * *

Kayako had known that Jill was in trouble; her new freedom had granted her the ability to not only see the approaching officers, but hear the intent that they came with. She did not like their purpose. Jill Robbie was an artist; a magnificent one, one that deserved to be celebrated, despite her current state.

_And now she's divulging information? She's giving it all up? She's giving up – giving _me_ up?_

Kayako felt it once again, just as she had felt it when the last man – the man who wanted to die – had entered her apartment building. The energy coursing through her pores, the murder and mayhem ringing like an alarm inside the inner recesses of her mind.

_It's time to break the last rule…_

_

* * *

Unbelievable, _Tyler thought, _unfrigginbelievable. Here I thought this was going to be the most difficult interrogation of my career, and this chick is doing all the work for me. Denying a lawyer. UNHEARD of._

But then he looked at her face once again. She was calmer now, speaking with a low, monotonous drone, completely devoid of emotion. Just two weeks ago, this was someone who had committed her final murder in such a horrific fashion that its gruesome details couldn't even be released to the bloodthirsty media.

_Something happened. Something happened in those two weeks – maybe something that built up – but it was so profound that it's turned this person, this brutal, emotionless killer, into a quivering mess…_

Then it happened.

The lights in the room dimmed.

_What the fu—_

While he had been looking up at the lights first, his head immediately snapped back down.

Screaming. Jill was screaming – a truly guttural, terrified scream. She was looking to her right.

And Tyler saw it. Saw _her…_

He didn't know who she was. He didn't even know _what_ she was. All he knew was what he saw.

Her hair was long, black as coal and undulating like a willow tree. Her eyes and face were turned downward, looking at the floor – what he could make out was that her face was quite beautiful. She wore a white dress – stains of fresh blood caked to the garment.

For some reason, she seemed to glow, an eerie, green orb surrounding her entire body in a sort of ectoplasmic perimeter.

But then she looked upward, and Tyler saw her eyes…

As one of the last things that Tyler saw in his life, it was a look of pure, unimaginable hatred – the pupils burned into his, the face twisted into an expression of such malevolence, such bad intent…

He barely had time to register the face when the ungodly figure stepped toward him, moving in a stilted, almost broken manner, then reached upward with her arms, grabbing his forehead with her right arm and underneath his chin with her left.

The horrific _snap_ sound was the last thing that Tyler registered with his conscious mind as the woman jerked her arms in opposite directions, shattering his vertebrae with one fell swoop.

* * *

_Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit…_

Jill had seen her twice already. After the death of the rich society bitch who had seen fit to enter Lawndale (which seemed like an eternity ago), the sounds had picked up in intensity. Sleep was no escape – she heard them in her dreams. The croaking, the cat, the shuffling.

Then he had seen her, peering at her from the closet in her room. The very face that looked at her now. It looked at her, just like she was looking at her now, with a sort of soulful curiosity.

But she had known then, just as she knew now – this was the face of pure evil, even moreso than herself, and she had known this day would come, when she would witness the ghost woman perform some sort of unconscionable act.

She didn't even hear her own screams anymore. The body of the Detective quickly fell to the floor underneath the table, no longer able to support himself against the flimsy weight of the back of his chair.

Suddenly, the door of the room popped open – but the lights hadn't brightened yet.

_Somehow, we're in this thing's world…_

It was one of the other Detectives – the heavier one, the one that had identified himself as Mark something. Moustache, pudgy—

_Oh God, man, get the hell out of here…_

The woman disappeared, and Jill saw a look of shock pass across the Detective's face. He had seen her.

And just as suddenly as he entered, this Detective too was dead. As if by magic, tears began appearing in his flesh, his own bodily fluids escaping from the gashes like a geyser, a veritable waterfall of blood spurting out onto the floor.

Then he exploded – and he was nothing. He had ceased to exist.

The door slammed shut, and just like that, Jill was alone with the woman again.

_She's still looking at me like that? She's still looking at me like she's doing this for me? _

_What the hell did I do to deserve this? Two weeks ago, I didn't fear anything. Now I'm afraid of everything – thanks to her. _

Jill had thought of several theories over the past two weeks, as the woman constantly followed her, visible to her and to no one else, always watching, always waiting, ready to pounce. At first, she had thought she was some sort of collective spirit, the remnants of everyone whose life she had taken during her recent secondary career. She had even toyed with the notion that the woman was the ghost of her mother, but the look just wasn't right. The facial features and that hair – Jill had never seen anything so black, so completely devoid of color – told her that this wasn't right. Her mother, like herself, had been a blonde, and if her no-good, soulless cunt of a parental unit, who had done drugs in front of her, had strange men over to their house to perform sexual acts on her for a fee when she wasn't even a teenager, and done countless more to scar her for life than she could currently wrap her head around, she would want her to _know_ that it was dear ol' mom.

Just yesterday, she had settled on her present theory, and with 24 hours remaining before her eventual capture, Jill Robbie had become a born again Christian.

It was the Devil. There could be no other explanation. This thing was the devil incarnate, and had claimed her soul as a result of all the wickedness, the stealing, the killing and the profiteering, that she had engaged in unapologetically for so long.

And now it was here for her…

"What do you want?" she screamed at the woman. "What do you want from me?"

In response, she did nothing. She merely stood in front of the door, her long black hair seeming to sway as if an unseen wind was pushing it, her face wearing an expression of happiness, of servitude.

Jill finally stood up, walking up to the figure.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?" she yelled, getting in her face. Now, she saw a reaction. The face turned from happiness to confusion.

"I don't want you around! I never wanted you around, do you understand me? I want you to leave! I want to face God on my own terms, so get the fuck out of here!"

Jill began to cry, something she had not done since those days in her early teens when her mother used to come home from drug binges, high on God-knows-what and ready with more than a few disparaging remarks for her daughter who hadn't managed to procure any money from sex-hungry men today to further her own drug dependency.

Through the haze of her own tears, she saw the face once more. It was not curious anymore. Now, the woman was angry.

And in her mind, Jill could _feel_ what was coming – and she welcomed it…

_I'm leaving, I'm finally leaving…_

_Good, I didn't deserve to live anyway…_

Jill heard something then – the same croaking sound that had taken up permanent residence in her dark matter – and then watched as the woman disappeared in a burst, her body moving at an incredible speed, a blur headed straight from where she was to where she would be.

She was aware of the pain in her neck, then reached upward to touch it with her hand.

_Wetness…and pressure…_

It was blood, shooting against her hand.

_The artery, huh?_

_Clever._

Jill Robbie collapsed to the floor of the interrogation room, her eyes registering the prone body of Detective Ness, her eyes already closing, her mind losing consciousness, her heart already acting as a pump, transferring the blood from her heart to carotid artery, and lacking anywhere else to go in a controlled fashion, into an ever-increasing pool on the floor.


	11. Killers

Killers

_The first time is always the hardest. Everything after that is easy._

_I am aware of what I am – the stories had been told to me from the time I was a child, when countless lost souls, through their own choice or otherwise, would come to her. The cursed and possessed would seek her out, and in watching my mother take the spirits away from them, I would in turn absorb the stories that had been told from generation to generation._

_Like mine. Sadly, there aren't many people in the mainstream world of Japan who know of the phrase Ju-On; say the words to any random passer-by, and the result will likely be complete and total apathy. To someone who knows, it has a very definite effect. Scared heads turning away, hushed tones. When I stayed behind, it didn't take long to figure it out. I was Ju-On._

_But in the past three years, I have become something much worse…_

_And it all started with the police officers and Jill._

_It had broken my heart when Jill told me that she didn't want me around; I had expected the moment to be symbiotic, that the two of us could join together, that I could make her more powerful than she dreamed. I thought she would see my actions and see a kindred spirit; instead, she was horrified._

_Regrettably, I had to kill her. I liked Jill a great deal. Not only for her fearlessness (with the exception of her end), but for the effect she had on the city of Chicago._

_What effect would that be?_

_Simple – the fear. The fear is the fuel._

_The fear that Jill instilled in the city made me more powerful than I ever imagined. No longer bound to a single location, no longer bound to some sort of hackneyed rule that hopeless gawkers had to enter a residence in order for me to teach them a valuable lesson, no longer limited in the ways that I could go about seeing my favorite thing – the whites of my victims' eyes, the look of relief, knowing that the agony I was putting them through was about to be over._

_Jill Robbie could relate._

_I am now more than urban legend – I am a virus, spreading throughout two continents like some sort of modern day Bubonic plague. I can now see everything that has ever gone on inside of every one of my victims' minds. As such, I know who they know._

_And everyone that person has ever been in contact with is fair game._

_I jump from place to place, from person to person, with surgical precision and lightning speed. At first, I started counting the number. Now I don't even bother._

_I let the news reports do the counting for me._

_I learned another thing from Jill – the power of presentation. I spent much time and thought considering who I should be, what I was about. Jill loved looking like a common street thug. I searched for something more suitable. The Onryo – the vengeful ghost – is a story, like Ju-On, passed down from Japan's healers from generation to generation. In almost all the stories of Onryos, the ghosts in their human form were proper Japanese housewives, draped in long, ornate, decorative Kimonos. Instead of the blood-stained clothes of my death, their garments became mine. I don't want to be viewed as a victim of any kind. Not anymore. I am not a victim – I am a punisher. I am Onryo._

_And while some of my adventures before may have been a little messy, I must admit feeling sympathy for the souls whose work it is to clean up after my lessons now. First Japan, now America..._

_

* * *

_"Turn that thing down!" Jessica yelled, slightly annoyed that her co-workers seemed to be more transfixed on the gruesome information coming from soulless news anchor #5,988 than the matter at hand.

"Sorry," said Chris, fumbling for the remote with a free hand and pressing a button a few times. The tan-skinned anchorwoman on the tube, in turn, became less overbearing and scary.

Jessica looked upward at Chris, an older doctor, in his mid-'50s with a wife and kids. Round face, moustache, overweight, decent candidate for cardiac infarction. It disturbed Jessica on some level that, in the state that Japan currently found itself in, with dead bodies turning up left and right for no apparent reason, she immediately sized everyone up based on health risks.

Fighting her better instincts, she again turned away from the mutilated body of their present assignment to scan the news feed. The anchor continued to drone on, but Jessica didn't need to hear her.

The inset at the bottom of the screen told the whole story.

_So today's the day, huh? Momentous occasion, I know._

Apparently, the death toll from the epidemic – which the governments of the world either wouldn't or couldn't divulge the details of (_or they just don't know_) – had reached an astronomical number in Tokyo. So astronomical that the number couldn't even be released.

Jessica knew only what the news would let the public know about Japan's situation. For reasons that nobody quite understood, manngled, slashed, sliced, and ripped bodies, mostly concentrated in Tokyo, had begun cropping up at a fevered pace over the previous few months The virus, paranoia, or network of very sophisticated and psychotic killers had started slow, and worked their way up to a frenzy. The reports scared Jessica - no matter the explanation, it spelled trouble.

_I see the dead when I wake up, and I see the dead when I sleep…_

Jessica's mind raced back to the present. The girl's heart had begun beating. Her name was Allen Rossum – early '20s, wannabe writer, did freelance work for the local papers. He had been delivered to Jessica a short while ago saying that her several witnesses had seen him convulse, stand up, and get ripped apart by some unseen force in the middle of a crowded restaurant. The scientific, clinical side of Jessica told her that this was impossible. But the result was there - a gaping, deep, still bleeding wound in his chest.

In the effort to revive him from death, they had quickly stripped away his clothes, began the process of patching up the wound, and applied the shock paddles.

The last one had worked, at least temporarily. The monitor began recording a steady, low beep.

And Allen Rossum's eyes bolted open.

Jessica stepped back, allowing her co-workers to begin the procedure of stabilizing him. Their group had been working together now for almost a year – including Chris, they had some very talented and very dedicated doctors in the Saint Luke critical surgery unit, and as the young one on the totem pole, Jessica was still amazed that they seemingly knew the exact thing to do at a moment's notice in every situation.

Then Jessica's heart leapt up into her throat when she saw it. Saw _her_, standing at the back of the room, behind the small circle of doctors hovering around the near-dead body of Allen Rossum…

She was obviously Japanese. The proper white kimono, large pastel moon and clouds painted on the right side, ornate red decoration on the left, swirling black hair.

It took her a few seconds to recover from the image and register the boy standing next to her – wearing only shorts, holding the woman's hand.

It was the look on their faces that terrified Jessica to her very soul.

_Bad intent…we don't like you…we want you to die…_

And just like that, they were both gone, disappearing into thin air.

* * *

"He was my best friend," said the woman on the other side of the table from Jessica.

The clinic, as it usually was, was packed to the rafters – not with people seeking remedies for common colds and flu shots, as they had been a few years ago, but people thinking that they had caught _it_ – even they had no clue what _it_ was.

Jessica had been told that Allen Rossum had a visitor – but as Allen Rossum had passed away after looking so promising when they had brought him back via shock paddles, the task fell to Jessica to inform this information seeker that Mr. Rossum had ceased to exist.

The woman began crying. She had given her name – Shawn McCurdy. She was a pretty girl, with long blonde hair and a lithe figure, wearing tight-fitting blue jeans and a tank top on the hot July day. Jessica's own clothes clung to her like a second skin, a problem magnified by the intense heat of the crowded hospital she spent almost half of her life in.

Jessica had been surprised that the hospital authority had even seen fit to arrange this meeting, but it was happening. Strangely, she found herself liking Shawn. She had already found out where she worked – a drug treatment center. Just like herself, Shawn preferred to use helping others as her livelihood.

"How did you know Allen?" Jessica asked.

The tears, while they weren't gushing out of her like they had been minutes earlier after hearing the truth, were still welling up in Shawn's eyes as she began to speak. "He did a story a few years ago on our treatment center," she said. "Actually got it published in the Tribune. Quite an accomplishment these days. I asked him why he pushed so hard for it when there's a lot more sexy news these days, and he said it's because he admired what we did there. We went out a few times – not romantically, just as friends, and he got to be somebody that I really looked forward to seeing."

_Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God…_

_Brian…_

The words coming out of her mouth made the name crop up in her mind.

_Brian…_

"What's wrong?" Shawn asked. "Sorry if I'm disturbing you."

"No, you're not. It's just…that hits really close to home with me. I know that's not something you're used to hearing from a doctor."

"Believe it or not, I'd love to hear it."

"I don't think you would."

"I'm a therapist, Dr. Harper, it's what we do."

Jessica shifted in her seat, a little nervous, feeling vulnerable – but something about Shawn put her at ease.

"It was – it was this guy that I used to work with."

"What was his name?"

"His name doesn't matter. He was…he was kind of the same way to me as Allen was to you. Best friends. Only I wanted him to be more than that."

"What happened to him?"

"He died. We had a big fight one day, and then he turned up dead."

_And the way he died…he went there._

_The house._

_It's _real…

After identifying his body, Jessica herself had gone to the apartment building that had fascinated Brian so much. She had only looked at it from across the street. Something about it seemed to call out to her, to beckon her to come inside, to see the mysteries of the other side of life close hand.

But then something always pushed her back. An inner voice.

A voice that she was not entirely sure wasn't the voice of Brian Mills.

"How?"

"I don't know. Nobody knows. For all intents and purposes, nobody ever will know. It happened almost three years ago."

"I'm sorry, Jessica. You know, we have a lot in common. Maybe we can get coffee sometime?"

Jessica laughed a little to herself, shocked that she had indulged so much with a relative stranger, and even more shocked that the stranger had put her so much at ease. "Yeah," she answered. "I'd like that."

* * *

After days like today, Jessica Harper's bed felt like nothing short of paradise.

Her head had just hit the pillow, and her eyelids had just closed. But while she had gained a new friend today, her mind kept returning to what had transpired in the operating room.

A Japanese woman and her son…

_It's them. It's the murdered victims – the ones Brian wouldn't shut up about on the day he died._

_He went looking for them – and they killed him…_

_And now they're coming for me._

Despite Jessica's exhaustion, it took her three hours of tossing, shifting positions, and attempting to think about anything but what may or may not have been a hallucination to achieve sleep.

"Who's there?"

Jessica had awoken with a start, obviously startled out of sleep by a noise. Something loud, and near, had obviously just occurred, the telltale echo of a sound still apparent in her ears.

She sprang up in bed, quickly looking around her bedroom. There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary. Her TV, which overlooked the room from the opposite side of her bed, was off, the moon and stars gave the room its only light from a sliding glass door to her left, and the door leading to the hallway was closed.

Still, she was uneasy, sitting up, looking around…

_Someone was here._

Then she heard it.

_CCCCCCC RRRRRRR OOOOOOO AAAAAAA KKKKK…_

"What the hell…" she muttered under her breath, her eyes going wide, her heart rate quickening, her head now darting from side to side.

A flash blinded her eyes. She found herself unable to make anything out with the exception of the color white for a few moments. Shaking her head to remove the cobwebs, the world gradually came back to Jessica…

And there she was.

The same woman she had seen earlier in the day, standing directly in front of her, at the foot of the bed.

Jessica began to scream.

And the woman began to advance on her, walking toward her with a stilted, uneven gait…

* * *

_I see everything now._

_I know everything now._

_I know that the woman last night – the one in her house, the one who had operated on the newspaper man who had been looking someplace he shouldn't have been looking – had just recently met this girl._

_I know that they were planning on meeting up for some future fellowshipping._

_This was a sentimental thought that would never come to fruition. When people cross my path, the rules they have established for themselves, in their own humdrum, relatively innocent lives, cease to exist._

_I dictate the rules for them.  
_

_I know that Shawn McCurdy legitimately has close to 500 people that she can call "friends." I know that she is a favorite of the people that she works with, and that she works for, as well._

_It's funny how things have a habit of coming full circle, isn't it, Shawn? Jill Robbie had been about to murder her, and I had saved her. Inadvertently. While countless others were powerless before me, Shawn McCurdy owed her life to me._

_I see her now. I have been following her since the meeting yesterday, when she had the misfortune of making herself known to me, through no crime other than also making herself known to Jessica Harper._

_She is working in a rehabilitation center, and I am more than familiar with what is transpiring now. Group therapy. A veritable smorgasboard of victims are laid out in front of me. Each of them knows Shawn McCurdy on a very personal basis, and even though I have been able to kill Shawn for well over an hour now, I listen to the stories. They amuse me. Drug addicts – they are all the same. They are miserable, soulless creatures who don't appreciate life._

_But they will appreciate it. They will appreciate it as I come to visit each and every one of them, just like I visited Jessica Harper last night._

_After all, I am a virus. It has bee fun spending the past three years in Japan. Now the virus needs a change of scenery - it's time to unleash scorched earth on America.  
_

_In the moments before people die, they are unquestionably honest. Jessica had suddenly appreciated every moment she ever spent with Brian Mills, who, in an ironic turn of events, had been the slob who showed up in my apartment building years ago, wanting to die, convinced that he was in love._

_I look deeper into Shawn's mind as she listens to the stories. She is completely unaware of my presence, but I am lurking right over her shoulder as she sits in front of them, the center of the circle. I listen for any sort of condescension, a feeling of superiority. A feeling – something that can make me feel happy about what I about to do to her._

_There isn't any. She is genuinely interested. She is concerned with their well-being, their trek back to civilized living, of appreciating life._

_The thoughts surprise me. I have never been inside the mind of someone like her before. I am used to hearing negativity. When you boil it right down, the vast majority of the internal monologue of any human being is negativity – who they hate, what they hate (both about themselves and each other), why they hate. _

_Shawn McCurdy is positivity. _

_I will regret killing her…_

_I watch further as she pushes an errant strand of her hair behind an ear, considering the story of one of her patients. The thought emanating from her cerebral cortex is a strange one – "I can relate."_

_I dig deeper into her own mind._

_Shawn McCurdy didn't used to be the picture of positivity and innocence she is today. She has faced much hardship in her life, both deserved and undeserved._

_But yet here she is, rising above it all. As of yet, she is unaware that the friend she made yesterday is dead. When she finds out, she may not be so willing to look at the best in people, to seek out the dregs of society in some futile attempt to reform and make better…_

_I lost count a long time ago, but I am well aware that it is a staggering number. My houses – the places in Tokyo and Chicago that I refer to as home – now serve as a sort of base, a source of my power in addition to the fear that now hovers over these cities like a cloud of radiation. Toshio is my constant and my conduit. We never sleep, never rest, and never waver. We make as many visits as we can every day._

_I know that one day, the world will be empty. We will have accomplished our mission. _

_Everyone must pay – including Shawn McCurdy, who wishes only to help others in a way that she wishes somebody would have helped her years before I inadvertently did. _

_Again, I will regret killing her._

_But perhaps I don't have to._

_I can let this one live._

THE END


End file.
